Woman with Organs on Her Opposite Side Delivers 4.1 kg Baby

CHENNAI: A 26-year-old woman, with major visceral organs including the heart located opposite to the actual position, delivered a macrosomic baby girl weighing 4.1 kg at an urban health centre in the city on Monday. Significantly, this is the third baby for the woman.

Doctors said Bhuvaneshwari (26) of Injambakkam, wife of a labourer in a steel manufacturing company, who has  congenital anomaly called Dextrocardia with Situs Inversus totalis, had a normal delivery at Sri Ramakrishna Vivekananda Health Post around 10 am.

The woman’s  condition is found one in 50,000 births where organs like heart, lungs, liver and spleen are located in the reverse position in the body.

Hence, unlike other delivery cases, doctors said the woman had chances of developing cardiac complications during labour or post-delivery.

“In her case, the first one hour and one day after delivery is important as she could develop cardiac complications.

As such, she is being kept under medical observation. Moreover, for her it was important to have a normal delivery,” said Dr Aishwarya Balakumar, Specialist, Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the health post.

Bhuvaneshwari’s first baby girl, now aged 8 years, weighed average at birth and her second baby died within an hour after birth.

Though the average Indian baby weighs 2.7 kg to 2.8 kg, macrosomic babies are born one in 20,000 or 30,000 births due to various factors including obesity or diabetes in the mother. In Bhuvaneshwari’s case, doctors said she was obese.

“Both the mother and baby are fine. She is also planning for sterilization which we will do only after getting opinion from an anesthetist and cardiologist,” Dr Aishwarya said.