If you're confused as to why I'm even writing about something so personal as infertility or weird health problems, I can only assume we aren't real life friends. So, let me introduce myself. I'm Brit, and I'm about to talk about my abnormal uterus now, ok?

I can honestly say that I'm not writing this to silence the constant barrage of "when are you having kids?" that started almost immediately after turning 24, but that might be a nice side effect. My response to those questions at this point are: "Kids? I'm just trying not to die." Hopefully that'll make sense by the end of this post.

I'm writing this for the same reasons I've written every blog or poem or article in my life - so that other people in my situation might feel an odd sense of comfort knowing they aren't the only one. In this case, however, that will be an extremely small number of people considering this is the weirdest infertility problem ever.

But I know that when I first got diagnosed, I was frantically searching for others in the same boat. Infertility is a broad topic spanning all sorts of malfunctions, defects and mysterious issues.

This is just another page in a textbook of problems that doctors don't see very often.

I've decided I'm going to be using a lot of visual aids in this post.

Breakdown of Kid-Related questions:

FINDING OUT

This whole thing took two years from the time I found out til I actually got an accurate diagnosis and doctor who knew what to do. But I'll start at the beginning. So, I got married in May 2013. Shortly afterward, I got the bomb dropped on me that my body, hormonal system, thyroid, GI tract and kitchen sink were falling apart. That was the most overwhelming time of my life and I immediately immersed myself into medical research between bouts of random hysteria.

A few months later, I went for a regular OB checkup. Now don't ask me why, because I can't really explain it, but I had a hunch. I lied and told my OB that I’d been trying to get pregnant for a year and asked for a pelvic ultrasound. She actually did it.

I remember laying there as the nurse sort of got a confused look on her face and said, "I think there's two in there." "Uhhh, two of WHAT exactly?" I asked. "Two uteruses."

She proceeded to follow that statement up with, "We study about people like you in med school."

"WTF do you mean two uteruses? How is that even possible? Are you trying to tell me I'm a Grey's Anatomy episode right now?" "

You need to go back and talk to the doctor."

Great.

Immediately, my OB referred me to a reproductive specialist. While I was waiting for that appointment, I put my medical research skillz to use and researched the crap out of "two uteruses." Unfortunately, that didn't get me very far because I quickly found out there can be several different uterine abnormalities (anomalies) under that umbrella and it would take further investigation/testing to determine what exactly I had.

But even if you add up ALL the women underneath the umbrella with ALL the different uterine abnormalities, you would still get about 2% of the total population.

Great.

Let me demonstrate with a visual aid.

Worldwide Population:

FIRST REPRODUCTIVE "SPECIALIST" MEETING

In April 2014, I saw the reproductive "specialist." Well, there isn't much to say here. He didn't know what the heck he was talking about nor had he dealt with anyone like me before. So that was encouraging.

THings the first specialist screwed up:

From June - Dec 2014, everything pretty much was at a standstill with the uterine anomaly. I didn't know exactly what the problem was or who could help me figure it out. The one thing I DID know was that it was serious. Either way you looked at it, I shouldn't be trying to get pregnant and so I didn't.

And as you'll soon find out, it's a really good thing I did all that research.

NEW YEAR, NEW DOCTOR

In preparation for new doctor, they made me schedule a pelvic MRI to get a better picture, and an interesting thing happened. I talk about it in this next post: Thoughts On Infertility That Might Piss You Off.

In June 2015, I finally saw the new reproductive specialist. I immediately liked him and he had actually dealt with uterine anomalies before, so, bonus points.

Doctor: So you need surgery.

Me: I'm sorry, what?

Doctor: You have two completely separate uteruses. They are, however, joined by a connective tissue. One uterus is entirely too small to ever carry a baby. The other, there's a slight possibility but with a high chance of miscarriage, bedrest, premature delivery, and severe complication. But we won't even know that til we get in there.

Also, if you get pregnant in the smaller one, or if you get pregnant in the larger one and it travels to the smaller one via the connective tissue, your uterus bursts and you die.

Me: Ok, so I need surgery.

Doctor: Soon. I need to remove the smaller uterus and clamp off the tissue.

We decided against immediate surgery as the thought pregnancy was now pretty much off the table. However, five years later, it turns out that I would end up getting it removed for other reasons.

UPDATE 2020: I will be having the smaller uterus removed via laparoscopy on March 19…as well as a cervical polyp and any possible Endometriosis. I wrote more about this here.