A woman in Bangladesh gave birth to a baby—and then, weeks later, after going back to the hospital because of stomach pains, gave birth to two more healthy babies from a second uterus she didn’t even know she had. This is as much a case of medical access as it is medical marvel: The woman lives in a rural village and didn’t have an ultrasound during her pregnancy, which would have detected the second organ. You probably have questions. We have answers.
Are these … triplets?
In some senses of the word, yes. The dictionary definition of triplets is “three offspring produced in the same pregnancy,” and this was, loosely, one pregnancy. “[It’s likely that] three eggs ovulated and were fertilized at the same time during her fertile period which resulted in three embryos,” as Christopher Ng, a gynecologist at the GynaeMD Clinic, told the BBC. But since these babies don’t share a birthday, and did experience pregnancy in separate locations and at different lengths, they’re also, arguably, not triplets. Many reports are referring to the second set of babies as “twins.”
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