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.

Most mom’s would do anything for their babies…even grandbabies… Eva Ottosson, 56, is donating her uterus to her 25-year-old daughter, Sara, who was born without reproductive organs, in hopes that she’ll be able to have a baby. (If the surgery is successful, Sara and her boyfriend will use in vitro fertilization to conceive). The groundbreaking womb transplant, set to take place in Sweden next year, has been attempted only once before, but that transplanted womb had to be removed a few months after the procedure due to complications. Maybe this mother-daughter duo will be more successful, like the 61-year-old woman who gave birth to her own grandchild in February.

Another above-and-beyond mom? Forty-year-old mom-of-two Diane Kieras-Ciolkos is serving as a surrogate for her best friend, who suffers from cystic fibrosis, a pulmonary disease which can cause pregnancy complications. The two, who have been friends for 30 years, had to endure serious psychological testing to get accepted at a fertility clinic. Stay tuned — Diane is due in July.

But one California mommy literally went through a labor of love (two days worth, to be exact) and gave birth to a 14-pound baby via C-section. Her newborn boy, Matthew, surprisingly didn’t break the Guinness World Record: A boy in Canada was born at nearly 24 pounds in 1879.

Would you serve as a surrogate for a friend who couldn’t carry her own baby?

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.