When 32-year-old Kelsey Hatcher had an eight-week ultrasound for her latest pregnancy, she and her husband, Caleb, were completely shocked by the results.
Kelsey knows she has uterine didelphys—two uteruses and two cervixes—since she was 17. And without complications, the couple already has three children ages 7, 4, and 23 months.
But they were not ready for what the nurse had to say.
As told on Good Morning America, and reported by ABC News, Kelsey told her nurse, “Just one, right?” She knew there was a possibility she was carrying twins.
The nurse replied that there was only one, so Kelsey sat down and relaxed. She tells the nurse not to be alarmed if she sees a second uterus on the ultrasound, but both Kelsey and the nurse suddenly see a second baby on the scan.
“Before the nurse could speak, I said, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s another one,'” Hatcher said.
“Probably all I did was laugh for 30 minutes or so because it was like, this is not happening,” he said.
According to the article, when Kelsey told Caleb the news, he said his reaction was “I don’t know what happened at this point, but it was wild.”
said Dr. Shweta Patel, the OB-GYN who cared for Hatcher and the two babies, told Good Morning America, “What probably happened was that she ovulated separately and had one egg go down each fallopian tube, meaning that on each side. of the uterus, and then the sperm traveled to each separate uterus and fertilization occurred separately.”
“While uterine didelphys is rare on its own, the probability of being pregnant at the same time in each uterus is about 1 in a million,” said Dr. Richard Davis, a maternal and fetal medicine specialist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Women. & Babies Center.
Davis and Patel both work at the hospital where Kelsey is being treated, and both said the two babies are considered fraternal twins, according to the article.
Until labor and delivery, she can deliver each baby one at a time in two vaginal births, which can happen within minutes or days, or if there are complications. Davis said they could deliver the babies by cesarean section.
The wild thing about birth is that these two twins can literally have different birthdays, because each uterus can contract on its own at different times, Davis said.
As far as her pregnancy goes so far, Kelsey says that during the first trimester everything was pretty much the same as previous pregnancies, except for the feeling of movement in both. She added that she can physically see the two pregnancies separately when she lies down. “There’s like a divet between my stomach so you can see that each uterus has one on each side. It’s pretty wild,” he said.
Hatcher is currently due on Christmas Day, and both doctors plan to carry her through her pregnancy as long as she and the babies are healthy.
