This 32-year-old mom is pregnant with two babies who aren’t twins—yes, really
When 32-year-old Kelsey Hatcher was having an eight-week ultrasound done for her latest pregnancy, she and her husband Caleb were totally shocked with the results.
Kelsey knew she had uterine didelphys—two uteruses and two cervixes—since she was 17. And without complication, the couple already had three children ages 7, 4, and 23 months.
But they weren’t prepared for what the nurse had to tell them.
As told to Good Morning America, and reported by ABC News, Kelsey said to her nurse, “There’s only one, right?” She knew there was a chance she could be carrying twins.
The nurse responded that there was only one, so Kelsey sat back and relaxed. She told the nurse to not be alarmed if she saw a second uterus on the ultrasound, but both Kelsey and the nurse suddenly saw a second baby on the scan.
“Before the nurse could say anything, I said, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s another one,’” said Hatcher.
“Probably all I did was laugh for 30 minutes or so because it was just like, this is not happening,” she said.
Per the article, when Kelsey told Caleb the news, he said his reaction was “I don’t know what happened differently this time, but it’s wild.”
Dr. Shweta Patel, the OB-GYN who is caring for Hatcher and the two babies, told Good Morning America, “Most likely what happened is that she ovulated separately and had one egg come down each fallopian tube, meaning coming down on each side of the uterus, and then sperm traveled up on each separate uterus and fertilization occurred separately.”
“While uterine didelphys is rare on its own, the odds of being pregnant at the same time in each uterus are about 1 in a million,” said Dr. Richard Davis, a maternal and fetal medicine specialist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Women & Infants Center.
Both Davis and Patel work at the hospital where Kelsey is being treated, and they both said that the two babies are considered fraternal twins, per the article.
As far as labor and delivery, she could deliver each baby individually in two vaginal births, which could happen over the span of a few minutes or a few days, or if there are complications. Davis said they could deliver the babies via cesarean section.
The wild thing about the birth is that these two twins could literally have different birthdays, because each uterus can contract on its own at different times, Davis said.
As far as her pregnancy so far, Kelsey says that past the first trimester everything was very similar to past pregnancies, other than feeling the movement of two. She added that she’s been able to physically see the two pregnancies separate when she lays down. “There’s like a divet in between my stomach so that you can see that each uterus has one on each side. It is pretty wild,” she said.
Hatcher is due on Christmas Day currently, and both doctors are planning to have her carry her pregnancy as long as she and the babies are healthy.