An Alabama woman with two uteruses who got pregnant in each gave birth to two baby girls over two days in December, CNN reported.
Kelsey Hatcher, who was in labor for a combined 20 hours, gave birth to a set of rare twins on December 19 and 20 at the University of Alabama Birmingham Hospital, according to a press release from the hospital.
Hatcher’s labor was induced at 39 weeks and throughout her labor was assigned two labor and delivery nurses for each baby.
The first, named Roxi, was born on December 19 at 7:45 p.m. As Hatcher was “undergoing the postpartum process” for Roxi, the labor in her second uterus was already underway, the press release said.
Nearly ten hours later, at 6:10 a.m. on December 20, Hatcher’s second baby girl, Rebel, was delivered through Cesarean section.
According to doctors, despite being delivered from two different wombs on two different days, Roxi and Rebel are technically fraternal twins.
Dr. Richard Harris, who co-managed Hatcher’s dual pregnancies, said it would be appropriate to describe the girls as fraternal twins, since they were two babies “in one belly at the same time,” except in “different apartments.”
According to case studies, the estimated chance of a woman with two uteruses carrying a fetus in both at the same time is around one in 2 billion. However, it is impossible to accurately gauge the odds since such a dual pregnancy is incredibly infrequent.
Kelsey Hatcher, who already had two children before the birth of Roxi and Rebel, said she and her husband could never “in our wildest dreams” planned a double pregnancy and birth. She thanked the University of Alabama Birmingham Hospital for helping to bring their two new daughters “safely” into the world.
Hatcher said it was appropriate that the girls were each born on separate days since “they both had their own ‘houses’ and can now have “their own unique birth stories.”
