Octobaby!

Have you heard about the baby with eight limbs?

As of this writing, the baby’s 40-hour surgery to remove her excess limbs is going quite well.

Here are some of the twisted highlights:

“We’ve managed to remove the parasitic twin out of Lakshmi’s body and started reconstructing her pelvic bone. We have managed to get the pelvic bone together.”

The conjoined twin stopped developing in the mother’s womb, and has a torso and limbs, but no head. It was joined to Lakshmi at the pelvis.

When Lakshmi was born into a poor, rural Indian family, villagers in the remote settlement of Rampur Kodar Katti in the northern state of Bihar believed she was sacred. As news of her birth spread, locals waited in line for a blessing from the baby.

Her parents, Shambhu and Poonam Tatma, named the girl after the Hindu goddess of wealth who has four arms. However, they were forced to keep her in hiding after they were approached by men offering money in exchange for putting their daughter in a circus.

The article doesn’t explain why the baby needs to not have eight limbs. This troubles me. If there’s no medical emergency that calls for taking Octobaby’s powers away, shouldn’t they wait to ask her if she’d rather be an Octowoman, and deal with the “freak show” label, or if she’d rather lose her powers and live a normal, boring life?

Sadly, Octobaby never had a choice.

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