Finding out you’re expecting twins is always a big surprise, but one mother was in for an even bigger shock.
Jennifer Ashud’s doctors discovered she had a bicornuate uterus, a congenital abnormality in which the outer, upper contour of the uterus forms two cavities on the uterine wall instead of the typical one. This is why the uterus is heart-shaped.
Women with such an anomaly do not have a problem with conception, but they often have problems with carrying the child because usually one side of the uterus is smaller than the other, and if the embryo attaches on that side, it can lead to complications.
The interesting thing about Jennifer’s case is that she got herself pregnant with twins, and one embryo got attached to both sides of her uterus. In the pictures, it looks like Jennifer actually has two separate uteruses.
Jennifer, 31, has an 8-year-old daughter, but during her previous pregnancy, she didn’t even realize she had a bicornuate uterus.
“This time my body surprised me,” says the mother. “We found it at 20 weeks, and since then I’ve been constantly told how rare these cases are.”
Jennifer ended up giving birth to a baby girl, Poppy, and a baby boy, Payran, at 34 weeks.
“Compared to my first pregnancy, I felt much worse. And because it’s very rare to carry twins on each side of such a uterus, the doctors didn’t know what to expect.”
“It’s a madhouse in our house right now,” Jennifer adds. We haven’t slept much lately, but even if it was just one baby, there still wasn’t much sleep. So we have twice as many hugs and twice as much love.”
She says that the babies’ parents initially only wanted one baby and could return the other, but as soon as she saw them, she immediately became attached to the new additions to the family.
