An Alabama woman who was born with two uteruses is pregnant with twins lodged in each of her uterine cavities.
Kelsey Hatcher, 32, who tells her story on her Instagram account “doubleuhatchlings,” has known since she was 17 that her uterus is “didelphos,” meaning it has two cavities.
It is estimated that around 0.3% of women are in this situation.
During a routine eighth-month ultrasound in May, Ms. Hatcher, already a mother of three, learned not only that she was giving birth to twins, but that each fetus had its own uterus.
“We were overwhelmed! We laughed A LOT at that first ultrasound,” she wrote on Instagram.
“The most likely scenario is that she ovulated separately and one egg passed into each fallopian tube,” Shweta Patel, the obstetrician and gynecologist who treated Hatcher at the Mother and Child Center, told ABC. Children from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
It is likely, she continued, “that the sperm entered each uterus and fertilization occurred separately.”
A double uterus is often associated with a high risk of complications, but her first three children were born healthy and at term.
Pregnancies in both uteruses are extremely rare. The affected person said doctors had told him the chance of such a case occurring was one in 50 million.
The most famous case occurred in Bangladesh in 2019, when then 20-year-old Arifa Sultana gave birth to two healthy babies 26 days apart.
Kelsey Hatcher hopes to give birth to “Babies A and B” naturally on her expected due date, Christmas Day. Both are doing very well so far.
Uterine contractions can occur at different times, minutes, hours or even days apart. Kelsey and her husband Caleb know that a C-section or two may be necessary.