This rare phenomenon happened in Alabama, USA in December 2023, when a woman with two uteruses delivered “twin” baby girls, one each from the two wombs.
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Less than a year later, in a similar pregnancy, classified as truly one in a million, a woman in northwest China gave birth to “twins” from both wombs earlier this month.
South China Morning Post, quoting the China National Radio reported that the woman, surnamed Li, gave birth to a boy and a girl in early September at Xi’an No 4 Hospital in Shaanxi province when she was eight and a half months pregnant.
The newspaper reported that typically, women with two uteruses do not become aware of their rare condition till they get pregnant. During their pregnancies, they are at an increased risk of repeated miscarriages, premature birth, underdevelopment of the foetus, and post-partum haemorrhages.
Li, whose age has not been revealed, had been pregnant before but suffered a miscarriage at 27 weeks due to unidentified factors, the report said.
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After Li became pregnant in January, doctors at the Xi’an hospital devised a meticulous plan to ensure her safety.
The babies were born healthy, with the boy weighing 3.3kg and the girl 2.4kg. The doctors performed a caesarean operation during the birth.
However, in the earlier case, for the Alabama woman, Kelsey Hatcher, it was her fourth pregnancy with a single baby being delivered each time. When Kelsey walked into the Birmingham Hospital of the University of Alabama (UAB), she had a pregnancy classified as truly one in a million: She had a rare double uterus and was pregnant with a baby on each side, according to UAB News.
With the help of UAB, she delivered two healthy “twin” girls 10 hours apart — and on separate days.
After 20 combined hours of labour, she gave birth to two girls, Baby A born December 19 and Baby B born December 20, UAB News added.
