A woman in Bangladesh received the shock of her life when she gave birth to healthy twins, barely 26 days after her first child was born. 20-year-old Arif Sultana apparently has a double uterus, something she and neither the doctors knew about.
Last month Sultana gave birth to her first child, a boy, in a hospital in the Khulna district in Bangladesh. The boy was fine, and the woman was allowed to go home soon. But last Friday she was in the hospital again, this time with a severe stomachache.
When the doctors performed an ultrasound, it turned out that the woman was pregnant with twins against all odds. “We were very shocked and surprised. I had never seen anything like this before,” gynecologist Sheila Poddar tells BBC. She then carried out the emergency cesarean section with which the babies were born. So Sultana and her husband suddenly got another boy and a girl.
Double uterus
Sultana appeared to have a double uterus, each with its own fallopian tube and ovary. Three eggs were fertilized during conception: one in one womb and two in the other. That would have been immediately apparent if the woman had undergone an ultrasound scan during her pregnancy, but according to Dr. Poddar, that never happened because the couple was “very poor”.
Healthy
Both the mother and the babies are in perfect health. The woman said she was overjoyed with her new offspring, but she is worried about how to make ends meet, now that the family has turned up unexpectedly. Her husband earns less than 62 euros a month, AFP reports.
The brand new father remains optimistic. “It was a miracle of Allah that all my children are healthy. I will do my best to make them happy.”
