DORA, Ala. — An Alabama woman with two uteri and two cervixes has given birth to two babies after carrying one of them in each uterus.
Kelsey Hatcher of Dora, about 28 miles (45.06 kilometers) northwest of Birmingham, gave birth to two girls on Wednesday and Thursday after a combined 20 hours of labor.
Hatcher was diagnosed with a double uterus, also called uterus didelphys, when she was 17. The rare congenital condition occurs in 0.3% of women, according to a report published by the University of Alabama at Birmingham. There is an “estimated one-in-a-million chance” of carrying a baby in both uteri, also known as a dicavitary pregnancy, the report says.
The older child, Roxi, was born on Tuesday, and Rebel arrived on Wednesday. Hatcher told WVTM-TV that both she and the newborns are healthy. Her husband, Caleb, was with her in the hospital, she said.
“That was our first moment of just us four together,” Hatcher said. “And really getting to breathe that in and be in the moment and look at the girls together.
“Never in our wildest dreams could we have planned a pregnancy and birth like this; but bringing our two healthy baby girls into this world safely was always the goal, and UAB helped us accomplish that,” Kelsey said in the university journal. “It seems appropriate that they had two birthdays, though. They both had their own ‘houses,’ and now both have their own unique birth stories.”
The question may cross your mind - are the newborns considered twins? “I think it is safe to call the girls fraternal twins,” said Richard O. Davis, M.D., professor in the UAB Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine. “At the end of the day, it was two babies in one belly at the same time. They just had different apartments.”