If that headline made you do a double-take, I don't blame you. Arifa Sultana, a 20-year-old woman in Bangladesh, has become something of a medical marvel this week, after welcoming three children within a one-month span. And no, they're not triplets.
Allow me to explain …
According to CNN, Sultana first gave birth to a single child, a boy, in late February.
Dr. Sheila Poddar, a gynecologist at Ad-Din Hospital in Dhaka, told CNN that the mother had a typical delivery at a different Dhaka hospital. Soon after, she was released from the hospital and sent home with her newborn.
But incredibly, no one on the medical staff — or the mother herself — seemed to be aware that there were two more babies in there.
It wasn't until the mother went to Ad-Din Hospital around four weeks later, complaining of stomach pains, that alarm bells began to go off.
Once there, doctors performed an ultrasound and saw two strong heartbeats in her uterus. Two strong heartbeats that belonged to two full-term babies. Twins!
I mean, can you imagine having a 1-month-old baby at home, and then learning that not only are you pregnant with twins, but you are in full-blown labor, so you better get over it quick.
Turns out, Sultana is one of a small number of women that have two uteruses -- meaning she conceived the babies in two separate wombs.
"It is not very common to have two uteruses," Dr. S.N. Basu, head of obstetrics and gynecology at Max Healthcare hospital in New Delhi, told CNN. (So in case you're currently panicking that you have two yourself, statistically speaking, you're probably safe.)
"When the uterus develops, it comes from two tubes, and those tubes fuse together," Basu added. "For some women, the fusion does not occur, and the dividing wall does not dissolve."
And in case you're still scratching your head, thinking, "OK sure, but like, HOW do three babies go unnoticed for nine months?" — there is a simple, albeit also rare, explanation for that one: Sultana didn't get an ultrasound during her pregnancy (or make that pregnancies), so it was missed.
The condition of having two uteruses, known as uterus didelphys (or double uterus), also causes no obvious medical symptoms, according to the Mayo Clinic, but is usually discovered during regular pelvic exams, or during imaging tests often performed after repeated miscarriages.
The story is pretty incredible, and yet it's not the only one of its kind to make headlines.
In 2017, a woman identified only as Nicci bravely opened up to BBC3 in a documentary called, The Woman with Two Vaginas, about her own reproductive abnormality.
Unlike Sultana, Nicci's condition — which included, but was not limited to uterus didelphys — resulted in a wide array of painful and persistent symptoms, which ultimately led to an early diagnosis.
"I found out I had two vaginas when I was 17," she told the network. "I first knew something was wrong when I was a teenager and I was bleeding more than I should. The pain was intolerable and, while on my period, I couldn't function. My doctor told me I had two wombs, two vaginas, and two cervices. There were times when I had to wear Depends because tampons and pads weren't enough."
Despite enduring quite a shock, Sultana's doctors say the new mom is doing just fine -- and so are her three babies.
The twins — a boy and a girl — were welcomed via C-section delivery, doctors say, and are now "safe and healthy."
And oh, what an incredible birth story their mother will one day have to tell them …
