She Gave Birth in February, and Then Again Last Week

Arifa Sultana gave birth to her first child in late February. Her next two came less than a month later—via a previously unknown second womb. It was one shock after another for the 20-year-old Bangladeshi woman, whose water broke 26 days after her vaginal delivery of a premature baby boy at a rural hospital, per AFP. Sultana, who is "very poor" and "never had an ultrasound before," rushed to another hospital, this one in Jessore district, where an ultrasound confirmed she was still pregnant and with twins, no less, Dr. Sheila Poddar tells the BBC. Poddar delivered the healthy twins—a boy and girl—via C-section late last week. "Everything went well" and the family was able to leave the hospital after four days.

There are often no symptoms for the one in 3,000 women with double uteruses, a condition dubbed uterus didelphys. It's caused when the two small tubes that join to create the uterus in a female fetus fail to merge completely and therefore develop separately, according to the Mayo Clinic, which notes "many women with a double uterus have normal sex lives, pregnancies, and deliveries." Still, the odds of carrying babies in both wombs is one in 5 million, per the Week. Though happy with her new bundles—likely conceived at the same time—Sultana worries about "how we will manage such a huge responsibility" on her husband's $70 monthly salary. "I will try my best to keep them happy," her husband says. (A family recently welcomed baby No. 14.)