With the help of a walker, the 2-year-old Indian girl born with eight limbs has taken her first steps, it is reported by the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph.
Lakshmi Tatma was born joined at the pelvis to a "parasitic twin" that stopped developing in her mother's womb. The surviving fetus absorbed the limbs, kidneys and other body parts of the undeveloped twin.
A team of more than 30 surgeons performed a 24-hour operation on Nov. 7 at the Sparsh hospital in Bangalore, India, the capital of southern Karnataka state. They removed the extra limbs, transplanted a kidney from the twin and reconstructed Lakshmi's pelvic area.
Lakshmi's mother Poonam said her daughter, named for the six-limbed Hindu goddess, gets closer to being a "normal child" with each day that passes, the Daily Telegraph reported.
"Lakshmi always knew she was different," the girl's mother told Channel 4. "After the operation she instinctively started behaving like a normal child — it's like she had always been waiting for the opportunity."
"When she was put in the baby walker she started pushing herself backwards with her legs and burst into laughter with a huge grin on her face," Poonam Tatma said in the report. "She loves it."
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