When US mother-of-three Kelsey Hatcher visited her obstetrician for an ultrasound this year, she saw an image of a healthy foetus appear on the screen – but before leaving, she asked the nurse for further examination – and was stunned when they saw a second foetus on the screen.
Hatcher had been born with a second uterus, and she had wanted the nurse to check on the health of that one, too, but when the nurse at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s hospital spread gel on the opposite side of Hatcher’s abdomen and went over it with the wand, they couldn’t believe what they saw on the screen.
Another foetus was growing in Hatcher’s second uterus.
One in a million women become pregnant with two foetuses in separate uteruses, according to Richard Davis, a maternal-foetal medicine specialist treating Hatcher.
Since that appointment, Hatcher’s doctors have been monitoring a pregnancy unlike any they have witnessed. Hatcher (32) is now 34 weeks’ pregnant and expecting healthy fraternal twin girls next month.
She told The Washington Post that she and her husband, Caleb, are still absorbing the rarity of her situation.
“I don’t know that we’ll actually fully grasp the reality until they’re both here,” she said.
When Hatcher was a teenager in November 2008, she said doctors discovered that she had been born with two uteruses and two cervixes – a condition called uterus didelphys that occurs in about 0.3% of women, Davis said.
Doctors warned Hatcher that she would face a heightened risk for miscarriages and premature births because of the disorder, but at the time, she had barely thought about the implications, thinking she wouldn’t become pregnant in the immediate future.
But in 2016, she became pregnant with a girl whom she and her husband welcomed early the next year. That baby, and her next two children, were born near their due dates without complications.
Hatcher said she didn’t plan to have more children. But when she unexpectedly became pregnant in March, they had tried to be optimistic about their ability to raise four children.
When she was eight weeks’ pregnant, Hatcher went to her first ultrasound appointment at the hospital, and was relieved when the nurse initially found only one foetus in her right uterus. But when the nurse looked at the left one, she discovered the twin.
Hatcher said she couldn’t believe the news. The nurse called obstetrician Shweta Patel, who reviewed the images multiple times until she became certain there was a foetus in each of Hatcher’s uteruses.
Patel said that many women with two uteruses have only one fully developed and functional uterus. She said Hatcher’s eggs probably travelled through separate fallopian tubes and into the different uteruses.
About 16 weeks into her pregnancy, Hatcher felt both foetuses kicking simultaneously. Otherwise, the pregnancy has been similar to her previous three.
But around 28 weeks into her pregnancy, Hatcher began thinking about the possibility of challenges. Each uterus could contract at different times, meaning the babies could arrive hours, days or weeks apart.
If one baby is born before the other, Hatcher said she would probably undergo a Caesarean section to give birth to the second twin within a few days.
Her doctors said that her foetuses are developing at a similar and healthy pace. But because they can’t lean on experience, they are handling the pregnancy much like a twin pregnancy.
“This is such a rare thing that we don’t have a lot of guidance,” Patel said.
The babies’ due date is Christmas.