A woman with two wombs only learned she had multiple uteruses while pregnant with her second child — after doctors missed it the first time around.
Hayley Scudder, 34, was told her condition is so rare that the odds are one in a million, so she now refers to her double uteruses as “limited edition.”
Hayley, who is from Stockport, Manchester, had never had any symptoms to suggest she had two wombs and always had light periods.
Sonographers hadn’t picked up anything unusual when she was pregnant with her first son Logan, 12 — but when she was having an internal scan at 12 weeks with her second child, George, now 7, doctors made the discovery.
“Months before George was born, they discovered the second womb when they gave me the internal scan,” said Hayley, who is a full-time caregiver.
“It should have been nearly impossible to get pregnant naturally — I was very emotional for a long period of time as I was so grateful.
“Apparently I should have needed IVF to get pregnant. Doctors were shocked — they sent about 15 nurses and doctors in. It was like I was famous! They were all saying they hadn’t seen it before.
“They told me that I could have been pregnant at the same time in separate wombs — so say I was six months with George, I could then get pregnant in the second one. I’m glad that didn’t happen!”
Hayley’s first child was born six weeks early with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and spent four days in NICU.
“He came out not breathing and the chord was wrapped around his neck twice and he had to go to NICU — I shouldn’t have been allowed to have him but we didn’t know about the second womb at this point,” she said.
“I conceived Logan in the smaller womb and that’s why he was born six weeks early, as there was no room left for him. He was in NICU for four days but he went on to make a full recovery.”
With George — Hayley’s second natural pregnancy, against the odds — things were going well until she began bleeding.
“That’s how they found out because they gave me an internal scan,” she said. “They told me I would have likely been born with that. I didn’t believe them, I had to Google it. I feel like I’m really lucky after seeing all the complications I could have gone through though.
“When I got to the hospital, they said there was no one qualified to deliver him naturally and they said if he was born naturally, it could have broken his neck due to the limited space.
“Because there’s a wall in between in the two wombs, they’ve offered to remove it to make one whole one. But if it doesn’t affect my body then I don’t want to mess with it. My periods are always light and I find myself really lucky.
“Apparently it’s like one in a million they say — I call it limited edition!”
Hayley has said she has no plans for more children and bar the double Pap smears, her two wombs cause her no issues.
“I have to have regular smear tests — one in each cervix, so they do them regularly. Apparently when it comes to me hitting menopause I’m going to really feel it twice as bad!” she said.
“I don’t think I’ll have any more children either. I see it as lucky to have had what I’ve got, so why mess with that?”
