Roxi and Rebel Hatcher were born at UAB Hospital on December 19th and 20th to Kelsey Hatcher, the mother with a double uterus.
At first, Hatcher was supposed to go into labor on her own, but at 39 weeks, she was forced.
Hatcher’s right cervix was already 4 cm open and her left cervix was 3 cm open when she got to UAB’s Women and Infant Center.
At first, Hatcher’s contractions didn’t happen at the same time, but they were close together every few seconds.
“I could also feel each side tightening up in different places.” As I looked at the monitor, I felt one that was steady and moved from left to right.
Hatcher is pregnant for the fourth time. During her first three pregnancies, she delivered two kids from her right uterus, which was growing faster than her left uterus.
The doctors chose to focus on Baby A, who was in the right uterus.
Hatcher had Baby A through a normal birth on December 19 at 7:45 p.m. The baby was seven pounds and seven ounces.
Baby B was born 10 hours later, at 6:10 a.m. on December 20th, through a C-section. He or she weighed 7 pounds and 3.5 ounces.
This took a total of 20 hours of work.
The doctor who took care of Hatcher, Dr. Shweta Patel, was ready for this to happen.
Patel and another doctor, Dr. Richard Davis, came up with three birth plans: one child would be born naturally, both would be born through a c-section, or one child would be born naturally and the other would be born through a c-section.
“C-sections may be a safer way to deliver in high-risk situations like this one, but we didn’t want to go straight to the third plan because Kelsey has had successful vaginal births from both uteri before,” Patel said.
“We also paid attention to what Kelsey wanted.” She hoped that the girls would have the same birth experience as her other kids, if it was safe and possible.
The fact that the babies were grown in both uteruses made people wonder if they are really twins.
Most of the time, two eggs are fertilized in one uterus, which is called a twin pregnancy. According to Patel, Hatcher may have released two eggs that were fertilized at the same time.
Davis said, “I believe it is appropriate to refer to the girls as fraternal twins.” “By the end of the day, there were two babies in one belly.” They just lived in different places.
At the end of November, Hatcher told AL.com that she has uterine didelphys, which means she has a double uterus.
Patel says that about three out of every 1,000 women have a double uterus and two cervixes.
A child in each uterus at the same time doesn’t happen very often. Patel said the chance is 1 in a million. Hatcher found out about the illness when he was 17. She said that she wasn’t too worried about starting a family at that time because she was still a girl.
Hatcher also said that she and her husband, Caleb Hatcher, had no plans to have a fourth or fifth child.
Before starting this campaign, they got rid of all of their baby stuff. Now, they’ve started a GoFundMe to get money for the costs of having two more kids. They now have five kids younger than 7 years old.
The goal was always to bring our two healthy daughters into the world safely, which UAB helped them do. “Never in our wildest dreams could we have planned a pregnancy and birth like this,” Hatcher said.
“However, it makes sense that they had two birthdays. Everybody had their own “house,” and now everyone has their own “birth story.”