A mother with two wombs has delivered twins a month after giving birth to a premature son.

The 20-year old Bangladeshi woman was in for an overwhelming surprise last week when she delivered twins, 26 days after having given birth to a boy, reports telegraph.co.uk.

According to news reports from Dhaka, Arifa Sultana Iti from Sharsha Upazila was rushed to the Khulna Medical College hospital in nearby Jessore on 25 February, following complications with her pregnancy.

Within hours, she gave birth to a premature baby boy through normal delivery and returned home soon after with her baby. But the doctors had missed the presence of her second uterus. 

“She did not realise that she was still pregnant with the twins” the hospitals chief gynaecologist Sheila Poddar told the AFP news agency.

Her waters broke again 26 days after her first birth and she returned to the hospital again on March 22, she said.

Dr Poddar told the bbdnews24 online website that an ultrasonic test revealed that Ms Iti had two uteri and to her amazement she ended up delivering twins: a boy and a girl through Caesarean section surgery.

“The first baby boy was born from one womb and the twins from the other,” Dr Poddar said, adding that it was a ‘rare incident’ which she had never come across earlier.

The mother and her three babies were discharged from hospital on Tuesday and are all believed to be doing well. Jessore’s chief government doctor Dilip Roy said that he had not come across a case like this in his 30-year long medical career.

He also questioned the Khulna Medical college and its doctors for not detecting Ms Iti’s second pregnancy the first time round. 

Meanwhile, Iti’s husband Sumon Biswas said that it was a ‘miracle from Allah that all his children were healthy.

“I will try and keep them happy”, he said.

In rare occasions, two uteri can develop in a woman when they are a foetus, with the ducts that normally fuse together to create one uterus, one cervix and one vagina failing to do so.

What is uterus didelphys?

Uterus didelphys, also known as a double uterus, is a condition where a woman is born with two uterus, to separate cervixes and sometimes two vaginas, though this is not always the case, reports msn.com.

It occurs because in a female foetus, the uterus starts out as two small tubes.

As the foetus develops, the tubes normally join to create one larger, hollow organ — the uterus.

Sometimes the tubes don’t join completely and each one develops into a separate hollow organ so the woman is born with two wombs.

It often only becomes noticeable after puberty and is diagnosed with a physical exam or an ultrasound scan.

In terms of physical anatomy, the two wombs are often slightly smaller than average in order to fit, though they can be as big as a ‘normal’ womb.

It also makes it possible to be pregnant twice at the same time - with a baby in each womb.

Some women are also born with two vaginas, although they can have sex and menstruate in the same way as people with just one.

‘They may know they have two and be able to find them, or they may not realise,’ Dr Leila Hanna, a consultant gynaecologist & Obstetrician at BMI The Sloane Hospital, told Mail Online.

‘It can be painful because there are two squashed in the same area, so sometimes we do an operation to join them together, but its not necessary.

‘They could also have abnormalities of their kidneys and the tube which bring the urine from the bladder.’

Women will frequently have a slightly higher risk of late miscarriage, premature delivery and bleeding during pregnancy.

Often Caesarean sections are recommended, to reduce the risk of complications.

There is no treatment or cure for the condition.