Miraculous: Mom's 'Twin' Pregnancy Is so Insanely Rare Her Children Will Be Studied for Years
Rare is the most common word used to describe Kelsey Hatcher of Alabama.
She was born with two uteruses and two cervices. And now, she is doubly pregnant, according to WTVM.
“Very, very rare. Yes. OB/GYNs go their whole careers without seeing anything like this,” OB/GYN Dr. Shweta Patel said.
Richard Davis, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist, said one woman in a million becomes pregnant with two fetuses — one in each uterus, according to The Washington Post. A CBS report in 2011 put the odds at one in five million after a similar case in Florida.
Having two uteruses happens in about 0.3 percent of women, Davis said.
All that means a mom and dad with three kids in Dora, Alabama, are navigating pretty uncharted water as she heads toward her Christmas Day due date.
“If I let myself dwell on it too much, it can be overwhelming and scary. But I just try to focus on the positive and know that I’m in the best of hands in our area, and things will turn out great,” she said.
Unlike other women, Hatcher has few people to turn to with firsthand knowledge of what she’s going through.
“When I first found out, I was like, ‘I wonder if there’s anybody I can reach out to just to, you know, see what their experiences were,'” Hatcher said during an appearance on “Good Morning America,” according to ABC.
“But I think I’ve only read of two other cases [in which] they’ve had [pregnancies] in completely separate uteruses, and no one that I’ve been able to reach out to,” she said.
Hatcher and her husband, Caleb, who both work, have three other children aged 7, 4, and 2. Although she learned as a teenager she had a double uterus, those three pregnancies were routine.
But knowing what she knew, she had a burning question when she went for her eight-week ultrasound appointment.
“I said, ‘There’s only one right?,’ and the [nurse] said, ‘Yeah, there’s only one.’ So, I just kind of laid back and was relaxing. Everything looked good. There was only one,” she said.
Hatcher said she was explaining her condition to the nurse when she saw the second uterus was also occupied.
“Before she could say anything, I said, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s another one,'” Hatcher said. “Probably all I did was laugh for 30 minutes or so because it was just like, this is not happening.”
Hatcher told the Post that because delivery could be very complicated — there is no assurance the babies would be born at the same time — she is planning to have a Caesarean section within a few days if the second child does not immediately follow the first.
Kelsey Hatcher said she’s known about her physical oddity for a while, and she knows it is rare, but to be pregnant in both uteri is nearly a medical marvel.
Because of its rarity, her pregnancy is considered high risk. https://t.co/kGgRJ8f2Qr
— KTRE News (@KTREnews) November 10, 2023
WTVM said it is likely Hatcher and her latest babies will be the topic of a case study.
Her OB/GYN said twins are close enough a term to use for the two girls.
“I think medically, this is such a rare thing that we don’t have a better way of describing it besides still calling them twins,” Patel said.
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