Most twins share a uterus before birth. That wasn’t the case for a set of fraternal twins born recently in Florida – because their mother has two uteruses, an exceptionally rare condition known as uterus didelphys.

Doctors put the odds of such a pregnancy at one in five million, according to a written statement released by Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, Fla., where the twins were delivered via C-section on Sept. 15. It happened only because two eggs were released and fertilized at the same time.

Nathan and Natalie Barbosa are home now and doing well, the St. Petersburg Times reported. Their 24-year-old mother, Andreea Barbosa, learned of her unusual anatomy four years ago, after a routine exam.

A double uterus can render women infertile, according to the website of the Mayo Clinic. But the babies were conceived without assisted reproduction, according to the paper.

Andreea developed a common pregnancy complication known as placenta previa and got ultrasound monitoring, but otherwise the pregnancy progressed uneventfully. Her obstetrician, Dr. Patricia St. John, said, “She had a perfect pregnancy.”

And her imperfect anatomy? Only one in 2,000 women worldwide have uterus didelphys, according to the statement. Doctors don’t know what causes it but say it may be associated with kidney abnormalities, according to the Mayo Clinic. That suggests it might develop before birth.

Symptoms of uterus didelphys include unusual pain or bleeding, such as blood flow despite the use of a tampon.

Here is a true story about a pregnant woman accused of shoplifting a basketball!

It seemed that earlier that year an expectant mom had been accused of attempting to shoplift a basketball and had been forced by store security to prove that she hadn’t. The humiliation of the incident apparently contributed to the onset of early labor, with her son being born a scant day later, a full month before the stork had been expected to come in for a landing.

Once the incident was behind her, the woman sued the store for what she’d been put through. And it was news of this lawsuit that made it onto the newswires in June 1985.

The full story was far less titillating than one- or two-line summations of the incident made it out to be.

On 13 February 1985, a very pregnant Betsy Nelson of Arlington, Virginia, was detained on suspicion of shoplifting by Irving’s Sport Shop, a sporting goods store in Seven Corners, Virginia. She had gone there to look for a rowing machine to help her get back in shape after the upcoming birth of her child, a joyous event not expected for another full month.

She didn’t find what she wanted, so she left the store to browse in an adjacent mall. She was fetched back to Irving’s by the store’s assistant manager and a security guard. A cashier had told her supervisor that Nelson had stolen a basketball and put it under her dress.

Nelson was held at the store for about thirty minutes, where she was given the option of either opening her garments and proving she hadn’t stashed anything in them, or going to the police station. She chose to clear up the matter on the spot.

“I had to disrobe in front of six male security guards and police officers in the store,” Mrs. Nelson said. “I had to take off my jacket, sweater and lift up my blouse.”

“Disrobe” was a loaded word to have chosen, as most people equate it with the removal of all of one’s clothes. Nelson had been required to doff her jacket and sweater and shake out her maternity top, a procedure which would have dislodged any purloined merchandise. At no point in the proceedings was she in a state of undress, at least not according to the descriptions of her treatment she gave to the press.

No basketballs were shaken loose, nor anything else that wasn’t Mrs. Nelson’s by right. The incident concluded with the assistant manager’s apologizing to her.

Months later, Nelson filed suit against Irving’s. She was seeking $100,000 in compensatory damages and $500,000 in punitive damages from the store, charging false arrest and negligence on the part of store employees. No information on how this lawsuit was ultimately decided surfaced in the press, leading us to believe it was resolved out of court.

Did the case deserve the media attention it garnered? Yes and no. Yes, in that we put motherhood on a pedestal in this society, so the thought of an expectant mother-to-be’s being mistakenly treated like a common criminal is abhorrent to us, as is the mental image of someone in that condition being bullied into having to expose (parts of) herself. No, in that shoplifting is a retail reality, something that stores have to combat every day. Without the ‘expectant mom’ angle, Nelson’s experience didn’t seem to have been unduly unpleasant, and indeed it appeared to have been well handled compared to how it could have gone.

Retail shrinkage (unexplained loss of merchandise) due to shoplifting is rampant, and for women a favored method of getting anything out of a store unquestioned is to put it up under one’s dress, on the often-correct assumption no one will detain a pregnant mom or even risk suggesting she might have been helping herself to a ten-finger discount. The sanctity of impending motherhood has aided a number of professional shoplifters to live quite comfortably.

Does that mean every pregnant woman should be eyed as a potential shoplifter? No, not even close. But on the other hand, if a store clerk sees what she thinks is a theft in process, she’s justified in having the suspect detained and checked out, impending motherhood or not.

A popular bit of lore (included here only because it too features pregnant women and stores) is the apocryphal tale of an expectant mom whose water breaks while she’s grocery shopping. She retains her presence of mind, quickly grabbing a jar of pickles off the shelf and deliberately dropping it. The pickle juice masks the amniotic fluid puddling around her feet.

Some have taken that story to heart, even suggesting expectant moms should carry jars of pickles with them once they near their due dates in case their water breaks in public.

When you’re pregnant, weird things happen to you, but one of the stranger ones is the changes to your dreams. If you can get good sleep, that is. Really vivid, really strange dreams.

I often have nightmares, but when I was pregnant my dreams weren’t scary usually — they became really weird.

In talking to friends about their dreams during pregnancy, I noticed some categories that a lot of the dreams seem to fall into. Let’s decode them.

#1. The Announcing Dream

It can take anywhere from a couple weeks to a couple months to know if you’re pregnant for sure, but a lot of women (myself included) have reported having a dream in the first few weeks about being pregnant or having a newborn baby they “know” is theirs in the dream. This has become common enough that that is the official name, and it’s been mentioned in books and even on The Ghost Whisperer. There is some suggestion that the announcing dream is the point where the baby’s spirit or energy enters the body, and that if your baby’s gender can be deciphered from the dream, it’s a pretty accurate indication.

#2. The Thin Skin

You know that Photoshopped picture where you can see the details of a baby’s foot pushing out of the mom’s belly? A lot of women have reported dreams like that, where they can literally feel their baby through a very thin layer of skin on their bellies. It seems that this is most common towards the end of the pregnancy when Mom is getting anxious to be able to really touch her baby with her bare hands.

#3. The Birth Trial Run

Women who are learning about birth and starting to form an opinion about the kind of birth they want often have a dream where they either go through the birth or see bits and pieces of it. For example, I wanted to do a birthing center birth but didn’t have it as an option, so I was stuck between a hospital birth or home birth (which I should have done), so I had a dream that I had a nice comfy bedroom in a hospital setting with a big bed and no doctors anywhere to be seen. I’d already given birth, but the meaning was obvious.

#4. Lots of Water and Water Creatures

Considering your baby spends 38 to 42 weeks in a watery environment, and your body is swelling with fluids, it’s no wonder lots of women have dreams about water balloons, oceans, chugging water until her belly swells, or even that her baby is a tadpole, especially in the first trimester. Towards the end of the pregnancy, generally dreams have more to do with big eruptions of water. Gee, what could that represent?

#5. Non-Human Babies

I already mentioned dreaming you gave birth to a tadpole, but it’s really common too for women to dream they birth something like a kitten or other animal. What this represents I have no freakin’ clue. Possibly a disassociation with the pregnancy, often in the early days where the concept of it “really being a baby” is still hard to wrap your mind around … or maybe you’re just a Furry? Don’t answer that.

#6. Scary, Baby-Stealing Dreams

Lots of women have fears about losing their baby, both before and after they’re born, and often their husband’s inability to help them. This frequently manifests in dreams; for example, my friend was pregnant with twins and dreamt that while she slept next to her husband, a scary man with red eyes, a red cape, bare chest, and black pants crept up her stairs. She beat and even bit her husband, knowing the man was coming, but her husband was useless. The man came into her room, ended her husband in a gory way, and then was coming around to her side of the bed, where she “knew” he was going for the babies in her belly. Yikes.

But things like that can often lead to:

#7. Fighting for Your Family Dreams

The creation of your family is also the first time you’ll really realize what it’s like to wear your heart on your sleeve. In dreams, when threatened, some women start playing out situations where they have to protect their families from would-be attackers of human or animal varieties. When Rowan was smaller, my dreams consisted of hiding with him, but I always knew we’d be caught and forced myself to wake up first. By the time Aurora came around, I guess I was done with being timid in my dreams, and I started fighting back. After one incredibly brutal dream that took place in my house where I fought off a bad guy to his demise, I remember my final thought before I woke up: “I wonder if the rental company will charge us for the blood stains in the carpet?”

#8. Sex Dreams

Some of the websites I looked at suggested these are often because the woman is worried about her partner finding her attractive, but you know what? I’m betting it has more to do with surging hormones and, especially at the end of the pregnancy, super-increased blood flow to the breasts and genitals, taking away supply from your noggin … much like being a man, I assume.

#9. Dreams of Being Pampered

Sometimes the mom-to-be really would love to paint her toenails or shave her legs but just can’t reach. Or dreams of a massage or other beauty treatment is just barely out of reach. It’s not all that surprising that third trimester women often dream about being pampered … sometimes turning into dreams like #8.

Have you had any of these dreams yet?

By Christie Haskell

When I first got online to network with other mom’s who were pregnant like me, I was bombarded by a sea of acronyms and slang that is like another language. A language that is the world of family planning, pregnancy and familial lives on message boards and social networks. Here is a brief introduction to them and their meanings, in no particular order.

TTC – Trying to Conceive
PG – Pregnant
AF – Aunt Flo (Period)
DH- Dear Husband
DS- Dear Son
DD – Dear Daughter
OPK – Ovulation Predictor Kit
POAS – Pee on a stick
EDD – Estimated Due Date
VBAC – Vaginal Birth after Caesarian
DDC – Due Date Club
L&D – Labor and Delivery
2WW – 2 week wait
CD – Cycle Day
CM – Cervical Mucus
BD – Baby Dancing
BBT – Body Basal Thermometer
LMP – Last Menstrual Period
HPT – Home Pregnancy Test
BFP – Big Fat Positive
BFN – Big Fat Negative
O – Ovulation
MS – Morning Sickness
BTDT – Been There Done That
MC – Miscarriage

As soon as I found out I was PG, I asked my mom whether she would want to know right away or later (she knew we were trying). She said, “Right away, of course!” Later, after much ecstatic screaming, she asked “Why would you think I would want you to wait?” I said I didn’t know, but seemed like most did wait until it was more of a sure thing in case of a miss. Her response? “I know, and I’ve always thought that was just stupidity.” She encouraged me to call all my relatives, some of whom have having a hard time, and “give them some joy juice.” We had a long talk about it then and I agree. JOY IS NOW! Whatever happens down the road, joy is here, real, NOW in the present moment! There is nothing like sharing this joy. If, God forbid, something terrible happens, your family will grieve with you, and support you. Meanwhile, all that grief can never erase the joy of the moment from your life – it continues to be real. However, if you delay and something happens, you will never have shared that amazing moment and there is nothing left to share but the surprise of tragedy and sorrow, or alternatively, somehow deal with it on your own. How tragic! Of course, every person has their own feelings and needs to do what’s is right for them. I for one, am glad my mom encouraged me to share. Don’t delay joy!

Can pregnancy influence your ability to observe or persecutive the paranormal?

My experience with motherhood is restricted to research and theory, so I can’t answer that question from a personal perspective. I can shed a different light on the matter… in hypnotherapy there is a technique called natal regression. Basically, the client regresses to the pregnancy period for deeper insights into thoughts or beliefs that the client adopted during this time. Before trying this technique I was a skeptic. I honestly thought that I would regress into nothingness and twiddle my thumbs at the boring turn of “non-events”. What I found, upon regressing to the natal state, was information from the night of conception, as well as an event during gestation (where I felt my mother worrying about finances), and then the birth…where I felt the tightness of the birth canal and a feeling of suffocation. When a fellow hypnotherapist asked me to focus on the first person I saw in the delivery room, it wasn’t human. My eyes were drawn to a spirit form, which is the best way I can explain it – someone or something who was there to watch over me. I felt completely comfortable in its presence.

Why is natal regression important? It is thought that, during the pregnancy, a mother’s thoughts and feelings will transfer to the child. The child, at this point, has no way of distinguishing between the mother’s “stuff” and his or her own, so everything is accepted as a personal experience (natal regression is the process of reversing some of these limiting or negative beliefs, if there are any…some people experience only love and a profound feeling of acceptance from their families, which is equally powerful).

Any emotion of the mother’s has the ability to transfer to the unborn child, and so it is especially important for women to take care of themselves during pregnancy. Try to remove any outside stress and remain positive and nurturing (even in your thoughts about yourself, women). For the hypnobeginning portion of my courses (hypnosis for a natural childbirth), we watched a video of a fetus. The baby cringed as it listened to sounds of a man and woman arguing, and then it jumped in the womb when something crashed in the background.

As a father, you have the awesome privilege of being there for your unborn child in more ways than you might realize. What you say to your wife – and the emotion behind those words – are interpreted on some level by your child. In many circles within the clinical hypnosis community, it is believed that the soul of the child actually chooses its parents before coming to earth. Thousands of regressions to the interlife state support this, but that is only an opinion and like any belief, you can accept or reject this.

This is just a little of what I have gathered over the years. Your experience will be beautiful in its own way…enjoy every moment.