Lauren Cotter was born with two vaginas and a double uterus but had no idea. When she was 14 years old, she started having very heavy bleeding and painful cramps during menstruation. For a while, she thought she had polycystic ovary syndrome, but when she was 16 she had an ultrasound that led to her being diagnosed with uterus didelphys, which is a condition where a woman is born with two uteri and sometimes–like in Lauren's case–two vaginas.
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A few months later, Lauren had surgery that removed the dividing wall between her two vaginas, leaving her with just one. "All I remember is being told I was going to need surgery to give me a normal life later down the line, but they didn't go into any specifics," she said in an interview published in the Sun.
The surgery left Lauren with just one vagina on the outside, but on the inside, she still had two uteri. Because they are half the size of a normal uterus, Lauren was told by her doctor at the time of her diagnosis that having children would be unlikely. But that did not prove to be the case.
Lauren is now the mother of four children, including a set of "surprise" twins. Her story is remarkable, and so are her two uteri.