A woman from China’s northwest region has made headlines after giving birth to twins from two separate uteruses, a rare occurrence that has captured the attention of the medical world. The woman, known only by her surname Li, delivered the twins in September at a hospital in Shaanxi province, according to a report by the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
The woman was diagnosed with uterus didelphys, a rare condition that affects only 0.3 per cent of women worldwide. This condition results in a woman having two fully formed uteruses, each with its own set of ovaries and oviducts. While it is already uncommon, Li’s case was even more remarkable because she managed to naturally conceive and give birth to twins—a boy and a girl—each from a different womb.
The twins were born when Li was eight and a half months pregnant, adding a unique chapter to the limited cases of such births across the globe.
If it’s one in a million doesn’t that mean that it’s happening like four times a year?
Even just the condition being called “rare” is odd, since that’s 12 million women. I have no idea how to do odds on fertilization of two different eggs, but I can’t see it as unlikely unless it’s a factor of the periods of each set of ovaries being usually offset.
Another recent US case has other info. The “hyperovulation” is the key component here, as normally the ovaries in even someone with two uteruses release one at a time. I read the first article as saying two ovaries per uterus, but that doesn’t seem to be the case, it’s just a duplication of the uterus and sometimes each ovary connects to its own, leading to these odds.
12 million out of 8 billion is pretty fucking rare.
That’s 1 in 667 roughly. Slightly better odds than winning over $100 in the lottery.
How you get those numbers?
Simple math.
8 billion divided by 12 million.
A billion is a thousand millions, so let’s reduce this to 8 thousand divided by 12, which is 666.667.
Rounded up to 667.
There isn’t 8 billion women last time I checked
Ha! That’s a great point that I completely overlooked.
It’s a phrase not the actual statistical likelihood of it happening. If they only know of a handful if cases then it is going to be in the billions not millions.
They’re not really twins if they’re from separate wombs.
I’d assume they fit the definition for non-identical twins.
