Meet Elizabeth Amoaa, the Ghanaian lady born with two v*ginal canals, two wombs and two cervixes!
In 2003, Elizabeth moved from Ghana to the UK where she was diagnosed with fibroids, non-cancerous growths on the wall of her uterus, and was told that conceiving a child would be difficult.
Meantime, her period symptoms only worsened and the pain became unbearable, leading to seizures and nose bleeds. S*x as well was extremely painful for her as had been since she turned 18.
In 2010, she defied the odds and became pregnant. During regular checks, doctors will sometimes scan and see the baby and other times they’d not, and then they’d see again. Her miraculous pregnancy and the inconsistent scans were hints to an abnormality – Elizabeth had two wombs. The baby was in one.
Another hint was that Elizabeth continued seeing her period during pregnancy. Mistakenly, doctors kept attributing it to fibroids which to them was ‘growing with the child’–that was later born prematurely.
It was only later in 2015 (5 years after the birth of her daughter) that she was diagnosed with uterus didelphys. In fact, she was born with two cervixes, two v*ginas and two wombs – a left one affected by fibroid (as seen by the doctors earlier) and a safe right one (where the baby was).
After her diagnosis, doctors told her having a second child would be risky. She agreed to have histerosalpingogram (insertion of dye into a womb 3 times over six months). Eventually , she took in again in 2016 but the pregnancy had to be terminated as it almost cost her life. That year, she was diagnosed with endometriosis, and in 2018, she was diagnosed with ovarian cysts.
Today, Elizabeth Amoaa, 37, is a wife, a mother of one and a women reproductive health advocate; she runs her own foundation called Speciallady. Her aim is to raise awareness on female gynecological health and menstrual hygiene.
She said: “I always say that Speciallady is my second baby. I want to be the voice of the voiceless for every woman out there who is going through symptoms like what I went through. My condition means that I am high risk of cervical cancer or ovarian cancer, so I decided I wanted to live out my dreams.”
