US woman with rare double womb has two babies in two days | BBC News
BBC News- 663 views
- 23 Dec 2023
A US woman with a rare double uterus has given birth twice in two days - after a "one in a million" pregnancy and a total of 20 ...
Mourna, on that story of a mother from Alabama in the United States with a rare double womb who's given birth to two babies in two days. To discuss this further, joining me now from Birmingham, Alabama, is Dr. Shweta Patel, who's the Assistant Professor in obstetrics and gynecology at the UAB, and Shweta was one of the doctors who helped manage that miracle as it's been described delivery. Thanks for joining us here on BBC News, Dr. Patel. Just tell us more about how this came about.
Thank you for having me. Yeah, so Kelsey was coming in for her first new OB visit, and we knew that she had a condition with a double uterus, and that's when we found out that not only was she pregnant in one uterus, but she was also pregnant in the other uterus.
That must be incredibly rare.
Oh, yes, it's very, very rare. That is something that obstetricians go through their whole careers and never see.
And how does that actually work then biologically?
Well, biologically, her uterus developed in a typical way. So typically a normal uterus forms by having two ducts. They're called malaria ducts that fuse together embryologically, but hers did not fuse and that led to two separate uterine and two separate services. And then she likely ovulated separately with separate eggs and going down each uterus and sperm being fertilized separately as well, leading to two separate babies in each uterus.
Wow, that is incredible. Now, how tricky was her pregnancy?
Her pregnancy was tricky in regards that we don't have a lot of evidence or data to know how to do her prenatal care. We took a lot of learning we know about how to take care of typical twin pregnancies and applied it to her. But luckily, her prenatal care was not too out of the ordinary. It was a typical routine prenatal care, but required more frequent visits in the third trimester, more frequent ultrasounds. But truly, her labor was the part that was the most atypical.
Tell us about that.
Yeah, there's a lot of planning that was involved, and we only had case reports to help us decide how to progress with her labor, and case reports had shown babies in her condition have delivered both vaginally, one would deliver vaginally, one with C-section and conditions were both delivered by C-section. Since Kelsey had prior vaginal delivery, she was very motivated to have a vaginal delivery, and her babies were positioned in a way that she could try for a vaginal delivery. And we really wanted her to go into spontaneous labor as naturally as possible, but she really went past that time that we could allow her to continue her pregnancy and required to be induced.
So that's what happened. But they didn't come out at the same time or on the same day. So you now have twins who don't have the same birthday.
No, they didn't. So as most babies and labors, they had a mind of their own. And one came, the first baby on the right uterus came vaginally, and about 10 hours later, the second baby on the left uterus came by C-section on separate days.
Now let me ask you if the babies have names and how mom's doing.
Yeah, mom's doing great and both babies are doing well. Baby A, the one on the right uterus that came vaginally is named Roxy. And the second baby on the left side who came by C-section is called Rebel, appropriately named.
Wow, Roxy and Rebel. Well, Dr. Shweta Patel, thank you very much for taking us through that story. And yeah, we hope perhaps one day to speak to Kelsie ourselves here on BBC News.
Thank you for having me.