Kelsey Hatcher is pregnant with two girls, but each baby is growing in a separate uterus.
Instagram/Kelsey HatcherCaleb and Kelsey Hatcher got the surprise of their lives when they learned they were pregnant with two babies.
Kelsey Hatcher, a 32-year-old woman from Alabama, was born with two uteruses. Now, she’s pregnant in both of them.
When Hatcher was 17, she was diagnosed with a rare condition called uterus didelphys, which affects just 0.3 percent of the population. The odds of becoming pregnant in both uteruses at the same time is even rarer — literally “one in a million.”
“OB-GYNs go their whole careers without seeing anything like this,” Hatcher’s OB-GYN, Dr. Shweta Patel, told Birmingham news station WVTM13.
Hatcher and her husband, Caleb, are already parents to three children and thought they were done growing their family. She found out she was pregnant unexpectedly in early 2023, and she was stunned when her first ultrasound revealed two growing fetuses — one in each uterus.
Instagram/Kelsey HatcherBoth babies are girls, and they are due to be born on Christmas day.
“Before [the nurse] could say anything, I said, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s another one,’” Hatcher told Good Morning America. “Probably all I did was laugh for 30 minutes or so because it was just like, this is not happening.”
Hatcher said she and her husband couldn’t believe it. She had her OB-GYN double and triple check both uteruses.
“I said, ‘Well, there’s two of them in there.’ And [my husband] said, ‘You’re lying.’ I said, ‘No, I’m not,’” Hatcher recalled.
Scientifically, the pregnancies happened separately, although Hatcher’s medical team is treating the babies as if they were fraternal twins. According to Patel, both of Hatcher’s ovaries ovulated and released an egg around the same time, which is a rare event on its own. Both eggs were then fertilized, and one implanted in each uterus.
“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.
However, since Hatcher has two cervixes in addition to two uteruses, the “twins” could be born at separate times if one uterus begins contracting but the other doesn’t. Their birthdays could technically be days or even weeks apart, though doctors would likely intervene in such a case. Currently, the two baby girls are due on Christmas Day.
Patel said that she and the rest of Hatcher’s medical team are considering all options when it comes to delivery, including C-sections for one or both babies. However, C-sections would present a higher risk of blood loss in Hatcher’s case, since cuts would have to be made in both of her uteruses.
Hatcher’s situation is also rare, even for others with uterus didelphys, in that she has two fully-developed, fully-functioning uteruses. According to Patel, many people with the condition have only one functional uterus.
Instagram/Kelsey HatcherKelsey Hatcher was born with two uteruses and two cervixes.
“There’s no true expert out there who knows how to manage a patient with two uteruses and two babies, with one in each uterus,” Patel said. “So we really are relying on our baseline teaching and our baseline knowledge and the normal physiology of pregnancy that we understand, and applying it in her scenario.”
Kelsey Hatcher has given birth three times before without incident: Her other children are now seven, four, and two years old. While this double pregnancy is unexpected and largely unprecedented, the Hatchers are looking forward to expanding their family.
“If I let myself dwell on it too much, it can be overwhelming and scary,” Hatcher said in an interview with The Washington Post. “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.”
After reading about the woman who became pregnant in both uteruses simultaneously, learn about the baby who was “pregnant” with her own twin. Then, go inside the story of the woman who gave birth to twins with two different biological fathers.
Hannah Reilly Holtz
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