Kelsey Hatcher, a woman with a rare condition of having two uteruses, gave birth to two baby girls between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Hospital announced.
Hatcher gave birth vaginally to Roxi at 7:45 p.m. Tuesday and surgically to Rebel at 6:10 a.m. Wednesday after 20 combined hours of labor, the UAB Hospital said in a statement.
Alabama woman with two uteruses gives birth twice in two days.
Kelsey Hatcher, 32, delivered healthy daughters after 20 hours of labor, one day apart – giving each twin a separate birthday.#motherhood #Mother #love #kids pic.twitter.com/9c2jJG17yG
— Aditya Rathore (@imAdityaRathore) December 23, 2023
“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,” Hatcher said, according to the statement. “It seems appropriate that they had two birthdays, though. They both had their own ‘houses,’ and now both have their own unique birth stories.”
Hatcher was diagnosed at 17 with the rare congenital condition of uterus didelphys: the two ducts that give rise to wombs fail to fuse, leading to the formation of two wombs and, in Hatcher’s case, two cervices as well, the statement noted. Women with the condition have a higher risk of miscarriage; a bleeding episode in Hatcher’s second trimester reportedly led to the discovery of a fetus in each womb. Hatcher, who had borne babies in either womb and given birth thrice before, was experiencing the one-in-a-million double pregnancy for the first time.
“[T]wo babies in two uteri were a true medical surprise,” said Dr. Shweta Patel, Hatcher’s obstetrician who cared for Hatcher through her third pregnancy and was aware of the diagnosis, according to the statement.
“I think it is safe to call the girls fraternal twins,” said UAB Professor Richard Davis, a maternal-fetal medicine expert who also managed Hatcher’s pregnancy. “At the end of the day, it was two babies in one belly at the same time. They just had different apartments.”
Double the joy in Alabama as Kelsey Hatcher defies the odds with a rare double womb pregnancy, giving birth twice in two days. Read the amazing story here: https://t.co/SM60ICdwHr pic.twitter.com/R2ocSEVNep
— TOP X News (@TOPXNews) December 24, 2023
“One thing I’d say I’d be curious the most to see about the twins would be if they’ll have the weird twin telepathy connection that most twins have,” Hatcher said.
