| She’s one in a million. Well, technically, I guess she’s sort of two in a million. That is, she has two vaginas, two uteruses and two cervixes.
On the other hand, J’s uterus didelphys – the technical name for her matching lady bits – is, according to one of the many gynecologists who’ve poked around down there over the years, literally one in a million. In and around there, anyway.
"It’s really, really rare," J proudly explains. "There are more cases of women having just two wombs or just two vaginas or two cervixes, but I’ve got the whole kit times two."
Well, except the clitoris.
"Are you kidding?" laughs J. "If I had two clits, I’d never leave the house!"
In fact, from the outside, things down there look pretty much in order.
"There’s just one hole, but internally, it splits into two vaginal canals with a septum between them," J explains.
From there, each vaginal canal leads to its own individual cervix and uterus.
"It’s great," laughs J, "If I’m having sex and get sore in one vagina, we can switch to the other."
Her boyfriend is also pretty happy about Sandy and J, the two pet names they’ve given her vaginas.
"What other guy can have sex with two vaginas and remain monogamous," he laughs, although J’s boyfriend admits he usually defaults to J, the slightly larger of the two canals.
"It only seems fair to sleep with her more, given Sandy is sort of like the other woman," he jokes.
And yes, he says, because it’s like one vagina split in two, the sensation is, well, tighter.
"It gets her off the hook for anal," he laughs, clearly comfortable with the situation.
In fact, says J, no guy has ever been anything but positive about the state of her nether region when she’s revealed her inner secrets.
"‘You mean I can have sex in both?’ is generally the reaction I’ve got when I’ve explained things before having sex with guys," laughs J.
But doubling her fun was hardly J’s first thought when she found out about her condition.
She was 15 at the time, and while she’d wondered why she couldn’t insert a tampon when she first got her period (it kept hitting the septum between the two canals), she didn’t know what was going on until she developed a nasty yeast infection. A whole slew of gynecologists tried in vain to find out the source of her infection until one gynecologist in Ottawa finally clued in that the infection was in a second, more hidden vagina.
"The doctor told me she didn’t know if I’d be able to have sex or have babies," recalls J. "I was devastated. That’s a tough thing to hear at age 15."
She managed to sort out the sex thing pretty quickly.
"I had sex in my right, more prominent, vagina first," J explains. "But my other vagina remained a virgin for two weeks before we cracked that one open too."
She figured out the tampon thing as well, and now wears one in each side.
"I should have my tampon budget government subsidized," J jokes.
The pregnancy thing was a little tougher to figure out.
According to the experts, the likelihood of having a successful pregnancy with a uterus didelphys is approximately 60 per cent. However, women with the condition are at high risk of premature labour and miscarriages because, since everything is doubled, everything is also smaller – and a smaller womb can’t necessarily stretch enough to carry a baby to full term, never mind pushing it out through a smaller cervix and vaginal canal.
J suffered two miscarriages of pregnancies in her left womb. But when you’re one in a million, you can’t help feel a little special.
Which is why, at age 40, she and her guy decided to try and beat the odds and have a baby.
They planned to give their odds a boost through the use of fertility drugs. Ironically, they ended up getting pregnant the good old-fashioned way, in her right womb this time.
And, against all predictions, J carried the baby to term and recently gave birth, by cesarean, to a bouncing baby boy – and she couldn’t be happier.
No one knows for sure why some women possess these types of genital deformities. One theory has it that we all possess dual genitals that eventually fuse into male or female genitals in the womb. In a few rare cases, such as J’s, this doesn’t happen.
But nature has a way of making things work anyway. In fact, just last month, a British woman who was born with two vaginas gave birth to twins from her two wombs, becoming one of only 70 women in the world known to have been pregnant in two wombs since 1905 – and one of only five such women in Britain in the past 50 years to give birth to babies that survived.
Unlike J, however, doctors had merged this woman’s two vaginas into one at age 21, although they decided it ultimately too risky to alter her wombs as well.
"My gynecologist decided that removing the septum between my two vaginas would cause too much scar tissue so we decided not to do it," explains J. "Besides, the vaginas were less of an issue in terms of having children than the size of my uteri and they weren’t going to take either of those out."
Bless her beautiful new son for that.
In fact, despite a few major ("the stress of making it to full term when I was pregnant") and minor ("the fact that every time I go for a checkup, the doctor calls in all kinds of people to check out my Hoo Hoo") inconveniences, J’s now pretty chuffed about her, er, Hoo Hoo.
In fact, she can’t wait to see the digital pics her doctor took of her uterus during delivery.
"I think I’ll frame one and put it on my wall," she laughs. |
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