Living With Two Vaginas | BORN DIFFERENT

A WOMAN with two vaginas, two cervixes and two wombs gave birth to her daughter without either her or her doctors being aware of her rare gynecological condition. Elizabeth Amoaa, 36, of Walsall, was finally diagnosed with Uterus Didelphys in 2015 – five years after her daughter was born. Uterus Didelphys is a congenital abnormality that occurs when two smaller tubes in a female fetus fail to fuse into a single uterus. Back in 2008 doctors diagnosed her with uterine fibroids and told Elizabeth she was very unlikely to be able to conceive. However, in 2010 she fell pregnant and gave birth to her “miracle baby”, daughter Rashley, now 9. Elizbabeth, originally from Ghana, said: “They basically told me I was actually infertile, so when I fell pregnant it was a huge surprise.” Elizabeth’s double womb meant that doctors at times found themselves scanning the wrong one, leaving them to wrongly believe she had an ectopic pregnancy – a potentially fatal occurrence, when a fertilized egg grows outside the womb. She said: “The day my daughter was born was a miracle.” The mother-of-one married her husband Rashid, the father of her child, in 2014 and the following year was finally diagnosed with Uterus Didelphys after an MRI. In 2016 keyhole surgery found that Elizabeth also had two cervixes and two vaginas, as well as stage 5 endrometriosis – a painful disorder where uterine tissue grows outside the uterus. Elizabeth fell pregnant again in 2017 but had a miscarriage and had to have a medical abortion to remove the fetus. On the back of her miscarriage, Elizabeth decided to set up Speciallady, an organization dedicated to educating women and young girls on gynaecological conditions and menstrual hygiene. As well as advocacy work in her home town, Elizabeth travels back to her native Ghana several times a year to share her knowledge with women in communities where talk of gynaecological issues can still be taboo.