A Nebraska woman who was born with a double uterus was shocked to discover that she was pregnant in both of them at the same time — but the pregnancy would not go smoothly, and she went into early labor at just 22.5 weeks gestation.
Megan Phipps, 24, was born with uterine didelphys, a rare condition in which a woman has two uteruses, and sometimes even a cervix for each.
The condition hadn’t been an issue in her previous two pregnancies, which happened on her right side — but earlier this year, she discovered that she was pregnant with twins, one is each uterus.
According to Good Morning America, Phipps went into early labor, delivering both babies in her second trimester — when they weight under a pound each.
One of the babies passed away soon after, but the other, baby Reece, is now the youngest baby born at Bryan Health in Lincoln to survive.
Phipps had had two children before, but they’d both been conceived in her right uterus, so she assumed her left uterus ‘wasn’t active.’
Yet during this pregnancy, she sensed that something wasn’t right and made an appointment with her doctor, who referred her to a specialist.
The specialist gave her the shocking news that she was pregnant with twins, each growing inside their own uterus.
Only one in about every 2,000 women have uterine didelphys, according to Scientific American, and the odds of being pregnant in two wombs at the same time is one in 50 million.
In June, when Phipps was just 22 weeks pregnant, she went to the hospital in ‘excruciating pain,’ where she soon went into preterm labor.
Currently, a fetus is generally considered viable — meaning it can live outside the womb — at 24 weeks.
Some can survive at 22 or 23 weeks, but the chances are not good: According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, babies born prior to 23 weeks gestation have just a five to six per cent survival rate.
Those that do survive almost always have significant complications or disabilities.
In Phipps’ case, the doctor said the odds weren’t promising for her twins, particularly because of the special circumstances of her pregnancy.
‘He had said that the girls would have a 1% chance,’ Phipps said.
Yet ahead of her delivery, she told him she wanted all interventions taken to keep them alive.
On June 11, she gave birth to her first daughter, Riley. The next day, her second daughter, Reece, was born.
Both weighed under a pound.
Unfortunately, Riley passed away after just twelve days later.
‘I put her ashes in her new urn, and ever since then she stayed with me and Reece up in the NICU until the day that Reece got to come home with us,’ Phipps said.
Reece, however, continued to survive. She needed plenty of medical intervention, including a dozen blood transfusions and a ventilator for 45 days.
Phipps said she promised her baby ‘that as long as she kept fighting, that I would keep fighting with her. And she did.’
And on November 2, weighing a healthy eight pounds, she was discharged and sent home to live at home with her mom and dad, Dillon Martin.
Reese is the youngest baby ever born at that particular hospital to survive.
‘She is a true miracle,’ Kallie Gertsch, a nurse who cared for Reese at the hospital’s NICU, told the Lincoln Journal Star. ‘[She’s] definitely the biggest success that I have witnessed.’
Reece does have some health problems, and had to go back to the hospital after developing metapneumovirus. She also had a gastrostomy-button place to dispense food through her stomach, and needed to go back on oxygen.
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