Giving birth to a baby is a pretty arduous task. I don’t claim to have any experience of it. But from what I have heard and seen (in movies and TV shows), the whole process sounds quite exhausting. And a woman from Bangladesh had to go through the whole process twice within a span of 26 days.
According to BBC, Arifa Sultana Iti gave birth to a premature boy on February 25th at Khulna Medical College Hospital. However, she was again rushed to a hospital in Jessore on March 22nd. Dr Sheila Poddar, the gynaecologist who performed the caesarean on Iti said,
“When the patient came in we performed an ultrasound on her and found there were twin babies. We were very shocked and surprised. I have never observed something like this before.”
Dr Poddar further added,
“She had no idea that she had two other babies. We carried out a caesarean and she delivered twins, one male and female.”
The twins and Iti herself were found to be healthy and were discharged on 25th March without any complications. Dr Poddar said that she was very happy that everything went well.
Now, most of us might think that this is a rare situation. However, Dr Christopher Ng, a gynaecologist in Singapore says that it isn’t. Christopher told the BBC that,
“If you go for a scan beforehand it would be very obvious to see two sets of uteruses. But obviously they are from a more rural area [and might not have access to ultrasound scanning]. [It’s likely that] three eggs were ovulated and fertilised at the same time during her fertile period which resulted in three embryos.”
Despite Iti and her husband’s troublesome financial conditions, they’re glad that the children are healthy. He said,
“It was a miracle from Allah that all my children are healthy. I will try my best to keep them happy.”
Doctors, surgeons and hospitals should always be fully equipped to deal with any and every situation. It’s quite obvious that the first hospital should’ve located the double uterus and alerted the couple about it. But they didn’t and because of that, a number of things could’ve gone wrong. Thankfully, Dr Poddar and her team did a great job and pulled off a miracle. So, let’s hope that this incident teaches every medical institution to do an ultrasound test after delivery because double uteruses aren’t that rare.