ACT OF GOD
An Italian woman is due to give birth to a baby girl this week – while also six months pregnant with
. Flavia D'Angelo, 20, is carrying the double pregnancy because of a medical condition called superfoetation. The situation
when two foetuses exist in the uterus after eggs have been fertilised at different times. It is an extremely rare and
dangerous condition, doctors say. D'Angelo is reported
suggestions that she might have had hormone or fertility treatment, instead saying it was a "gift from God." The condition happens when a woman continues to ovulate after the fist conception. D'Angelo, who lives with her husband in Ascolipiceno, told Italian television: "I am afraid because I do not know what will happen. Right now we are just going by supposition." Her doctor Giovan Battista Serra, from Rome's Cristo Re hospital said D'Angelo's condition was
more surprising because of a string of circumstances. D'Angelo is young, while
births occur more often when older women give birth for the first time. Also the
of time between D'Angelo's first and second births is unusually long – it is normally only one month on the few occasions that it has happened. D'Angelo's husband, 25-year-old marketing consultant Raccardo Darquini, began laughing on
the news of the double pregnancy. "My first reaction, maybe because I was nervous, was to laugh," he
television. "She instead began to cry and she was asking all the time to look again to make sure." Their lawyer Domenico Antonio Latino said: "There is now much expectation for the photographs of Flavia, still pregnant, with a new-born baby in her arms." But gynecologists warn the births will not be without their complications. D'Angelo may find it difficult to deliver the first baby without
the premature birth of the others.
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