Faye Wilkins
Wilkins still gave birth separately to two children – seven-year-old Molly and two-year-old George – who grew in two different wombs. Facebook/Faye Wilkins

A 36-year-old woman underwent womb transplant in early 2016 so she could bear her biological condition will instead settle for her 44-year-old mother serving as surrogate child-bearer. That’s because the landmark procedure done in February on Lindsey McFarland failed due to a yeast infection which forced doctors to remove the womb.

McFarland is one in every 5,000 women who were born without a womb or lost the organ due to cancer. However, in the US, there is a 31-year-old woman who was born not only with two wombs but also two vaginas, reports The New York Post.

Faye Wilkins found out only about her unique condition, called Uterus Didelphys (UD), when she was 14. She notice that as a teen, her friends had begun menstruation but she only had stomach cramps. When the pain worsened, her mother had her checked and the doctor though she had an ovarian cyst.

But eight months later, her uterus ruptured when she went to the toilet. Wilkins recalls she heard a huge pop and felt something inside her exploded. Finally, the doctors diagnosed her with UD which caused the blockage and buildup of menstrual blood that reached 12 centimetres in size.

It was then that she found out that she has two sets of reproductive organs made up of two vaginas, two cervixes and two wombs. After two months, she underwent surgery when her two vaginas were made into one to prevent another rupture.

However, Wilkins was warned by her doctor she has minimal chances of carrying a baby despite having two wombs which were half the size of normal wombs that even implantation would be harder. Despite six miscarriages, Wilkins still gave birth separately to two children – seven-year-old Molly and two-year-old George – who grew in two different wombs.

She became pregnant on the left womb in 2008, and to prevent premature birth, she had a cervical stitch. Wilkins delivered Molly by C-section seven weeks and two days ahead of schedule. Five years later, she became pregnant on her right womb by a new partner, Lee Welch. To boost George’s development, she received steroids and also gave birth to her son seven weeks and two days ahead.

Wilkins came out publicly to share about UD. She explains, “Having UD doesn’t make you any less of a woman, your internal organs have just formed slightly differently.”

Another woman with UD shared details of her condition anonymously in a Brave Reddit thread in 2013, reports Huffington Post. The woman, who used the name nurseryRN, admits that men she dated expressed disbelief when she told them about her condition. Her two vaginas are side by side and the left side, which is smaller, hurts when penetrated.

The rare condition also happens to men, and it is called diphallia. There is an American man with the condition who also first discussed it publicly in an Ask Me Anything in Reddit thread and then came out with a memoir titled “Double Header: My Life With Two Penises.”