Originally published at: Alabama Woman with Two Uteri Set to Give Birth to Twins
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I wish her the best of luck and a healthy pregnancy. I wonder if medical experts in other parts of the animal kingdom would have any useful experience because a fair number of mammals out there do have multiple uteruses, including pigs, dogs and cats.
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Gotta love that a woman with unusual reproductive abilities is named “Hatcher.”
Best of luck to her and her family!
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If I were her, I’d be terrified. It’s scary enough to be pregnant under the best of circumstances, but how much worse is it when the response of doctors is, “We have no idea how all this is going to work, it’s probably a bad idea”?
Oh, I’m sure that would be very reassuring: “We don’t know what we’re doing, but don’t worry, we brought in a veterinarian to help out!”
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That’s been a longtime staple of sit-coms where characters go into labor. Might even qualify as a trope. Usually works out fine!
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“I need to get a medical history from the owner… I mean patient” [laugh track]
Veterinarians are trained doctors after all. In some ways the most general of generalists AND the most specialist of specialists.
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Just because it’s common in other mammals doesn’t mean a vet should be consulted. 
How about a specialist on non-normal pregnancies, which are actually not entirely uncommon?
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We’re only walking incubators; didn’t you know?
/s
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And apparently, we’re interchangeable with our pets, too… /s
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Well, yes, but the approaches in providing care aren’t compatible. A huge part of providing medical care for humans, especially when it comes to pregnancies, involves listening to what the patient is saying*. A skill vets don’t have a chance to develop. (Leaving aside whether knowledge of how a pig or cat pregnancy works would be of any use for humans with non-standard pregnancies.)
*E.g. studies show that the poor outcomes in pregnancies for non-white women in the US are entirely down to (racist) white doctors not listening to their patients or treating their concerns seriously. The consequences of not listening well to patients in this context are pretty dire.
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Also, WOMEN’S BODIES ARE NOT LIKE ANIMALS BODIES…
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Perhaps if we cared about women enough to research pregnancy better in humans we wouldn’t be left with whatever might or might not work for a cow as our standards for OBGYN healthcare.
Sorry to interrupt a joke.
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That sure as hell would help. But then we might have slightly less time for studying boners, so, can’t do that…
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In similar baseball news:
I am not an OB GYN, for starters. I do have a sister who is a vet. She was mortified by the idea of being asked to comment on a human pregnancy, both from the standpoint of “this is not what I do” and from the “you do understand, this is a human, right?” standpoint. I am of the opinion that humans need human docs. I did find an OB that I have come to trust:
who might be able to shed some light on the situation. It is rare, but not unheard of. Here, this woman would probably be referred to the high-risk clinic at UVA. Certainly not to a vet. I feel dirty just typing that, and should anyone have suggested such a thing to my wife I suspect there would have been violence. Nope, not a good idea.
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Again, your wife is my kind of woman.
Such a “suggestion” is beyond dehumanizing, it’s insulting to the point of invoking the spirit of Della Reese in response:
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