Indian Woman Gives Birth to 10 Stillborn Babies

A 28-year-old woman in Madhya Pradesh has given birth to ten stillborn babies at 12 weeks of pregnancy. This is thought to be the highest number of children conceived from a single pregnancy, ever reported in the Indian medical history.

Anju Kushwaha from Koti village in Satna district was keeping well until she started experiencing some discomforts late Sunday night. She was immediately rushed to the Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Hospital in Rewa, situated nearly 125 km from her place. However, on her way to the hospital, she delivered nine foetuses. At the hospital, the doctors operated on the woman to remove the 10^th foetus from her uterus.

"Anju's husband brought nine fetuses wrapped in a piece of cloth to the hospital. She had spontaneously aborted them enroute to the hospital," Dr SK Pathak, assistant superintendent of the hospital, told India Today. "On examining her, it was found that she was carrying one more foetus. Anju was rushed to the operation theatre and that 10th foetus too was removed from her womb."  

The couple Anju and Sanjay were expecting babies via in vitro fertilisation (IVF) technique. In case of IVF treatments, Multifetal pregnancy reduction (MFPR)  is normally used to terminate babies when more than three are conceived. However, the multiple pregnancies remained undiscovered and doctors couldn't do anything as the couple rarely consulted them after the fertility treatments.  

"It seems that that there was no regular follow-up of her pregnancy after IVF. At least three offspring's could have been saved by reducing the pregnancy," Dr Sumitra Yadav, a senior gynecologist associated with Maharaja Yeshwantrao Hospital, Indore, told Times of India.

Multiple births have always been part of the medical history. In 1971, Geraldine Brodrick, a woman in Australia gave birth to nonuplets (nine babies) and in 1999, Zurina Mat Saad, a woman in Malaysia gave birth to five boys and four girls. In both the cases, none of the babies survived.