Doctors have discovered that a 27-year-old British woman has a double womb. Not only that, she also has two cervixes and two vaginas. Having two sets of reproductive organs, a condition known as uterus didelphys, may sound bizarre, but doctors say it affects as many as one in 1,000 women.
Lindsay Hasaj never suspected she was doubly-endowed, and neither did her husband or any of the doctors she had visited in her 27 years of life. Uterus didelphys occurs during embryonic development, when the two halves of the uterus, each attached to a fallopian tube, fail to fuse together. From the outside, women with uterus didelphys look completely normal. Doctors performing pelvic exams might not even notice, because, as one doctor explained, it’s like walking blindfolded into a tent separated with a tarp down the middle.
Hasaj was finally diagnosed after she had a sonogram for her pregnancy (which is in her right uterus). Only afterwards did Hasaj connect her condition with the problems she’d always had in using tampons.
Pregnancies in women with two uteruses face a higher chance of miscarriage, breech birth, and premature birth. But Hasaj’s isn’t even the strangest case. In 2007, a woman with two uteruses gave birth to triplets: two (identical twins) from one uterus, and one from the other uterus. Statistically, the odds of having triplets from two wombs is 25 million to one.
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Image: flickr / Caveman 92223
January 7th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
I guess her intelligent designer got a little sauced and decided to play a joke.
January 8th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Thank you Jason. That made my day.
July 8th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
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September 25th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
I too was diagnosed w/ uterus didelphys after a CT Scan confirmed the unusual anatomy (and also a lack of left kidney).
Though surprising, it did confirm some things.
I have a feeling this type of birth defect is a little more common than doctors realize because it is something that doesn’t really hamper one’s day-to-day life.
September 30th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
A womb with a view?
November 8th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
I know someone who has a septate uterus (similar to the other condition but the vaginal region is joined where there are two uterus that join before the cervix and vagianal area) the falopean tubes are normal. I researched about it and statistics say that if the woman who has this condition does concieve and have full term delivery, the chances of having another full term pregnancy are almost the same as other women w/ “regualar” anatomy.