A social media post with visuals of a newborn baby clinging to the mother’s face is being shared widely across the platforms claiming that a woman, who gave birth to a baby after 11 years died immediately after giving birth to the baby. Through this article, let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Visuals of Kota woman, who gave birth to a baby after 11 years died after giving birth to a baby.
Fact: One of the videos shows a newborn baby clinging to her mother’s face just after being born in Brazil. The news article which reported the video did not mention that the mother died after giving birth or she was barren for 11 years. The other video is available on the internet without any context as claimed in the post. The image of a man in surgical apron & crying was initially shared on ‘ozgemetinphotography’ Instagram account. In one of the comments below the image the user claims that he clicked the image, and he ruled the viral story as fake. The story being attributed to the visuals in the post is being shared on internet since many years. However the veracity of the story is not known. Hence the claim attributing the visuals to a woman from Kota is FALSE.
The viral video was initially reported in 2017. The article reported ‘a newborn baby was filmed clinging to her mum’s face just seconds after being born in Brazil’. However, nowhere in the article, it was mentioned that the woman was barren for 11 years or she died immediately after giving birth to a baby. The incident has nothing to do with Kota, Rajasthan.
This image of a man dressed in a surgical apron crying is doing rounds on the internet for many years associating it with the same story (here). A reverse image search of the photo led us to an Instagram post, which initially shared the image. The image was initially shared on an Instagram account ‘ozgemetinphotography’, a baby photographer back in 2017. In response to a comment, the user of the account claimed that he clicked the image of a crying man, and the user ruled out the viral story associated with the image.
He claims that the man was crying because his baby was born as a healthy baby and not because his wife died. Snopes debunked the same image when it went viral back in 2017.
The other image in the collage where a newborn is seen clinging to her mother’s face was initially shared in 2015. A Facebook account that shares images of baby photography and wedding images shared this image in December 2015. However, the post did not mention anything like the mother died giving birth to the baby.
This video is also available on the internet for a few months. A reverse image search of the screenshots of the video led us to a baby products agency’s Facebook page. The video was initially shared on this page in September 2021. However, we could not find any mention of the mother’s death following the birth or that the mother was barren for 11 years.
Although we could not independently verify the veracity of these visuals, the available evidence suggests that the viral context associated with these visuals is not true and the visuals are not from Rajasthan’s Kota.
To sum it up, the visuals of a newborn baby and her mother are being shared with a false and an old story.
Update (26 January 2022): Another image is also going viral with a similar claim of a woman from Jodhpur. The post also claims that the eyes of that woman were donated by the family after her death. While it is true that a woman named Suhani passed away during delivery in Jodhpur, the story associated is not true. Her family donated her eyes. Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, who is the MP from Jodhpur also tweeted about the eye donation.
Update (03 March 2022): Another video is also being widely shared with a similar narrative. The video could be found on internet at least since May 2021, but none of these uploads had mentioned that the mother had died after giving birth or that she was barren for 11 years.
