44-Year-Old Mother With Heart-Shaped Uterus Has Her Fifth Child After Suffering 18 Miscarriages

Kate Ingram Woolf, 44, who always dreamt of having a big family has finally delivered her 5th child after having 18 miscarriages due to her heart-shaped womb.

She had two children in the mid-90s with her first husband and suffered miscarriages when she was trying to have her third child. But more than two decades later, she now has delivered her fifth and final child after suffering 18 miscarriages.

Her fifth child is now six months old and she says she couldn’t be happier since she now has the family she always fantasized about.

“I had always wanted a big family and when I was going through the miscarriages, it just made me want children even more. I became obsessed with wanting a bigger family. After going through 18 miscarriages, I just wanted to keep on trying and hoped that one day I would have the perfect little family that I do now,” Daily Mail quoted Kate.

Kate hated being pregnant because she was scared of miscarrying. She had to undergo scans every couple of weeks to reassure that her pregnancy was safe. She had been suffering from postnatal depression in spite of not giving birth.

Between 1997 and 2005, she suffered miscarriages for 15 consecutive times which led to the breakdown of her marriage. After her 16^th unfortunate miscarriage, doctors ran several tests to find out that it was her bicornuate uterus which was causing the recurrent miscarriages.

A heart-shaped womb aka bicornuate uterus occurs in 0.1-0.5% of American women. Although such a uterus probably won't affect one’s fertility, it certainly raises the risk of having a miscarriage during later stages of pregnancy. Irregular uterine contractions or reduced uterine capacity in a heart-shaped womb is responsible for such mishaps.

Women with heart-shaped wombs are often urged to have C-sections since it can affect the way their baby lies inside the uterus. However, in some cases, women with bicornuate uteruses can have successful pregnancies without undergoing any treatment.

Surgical procedures including Strassman metroplasty are recommended for women with a bicornuate uterus who had suffered repeated miscarriages. To date, there have been only 12 reported cases of twin pregnancies among women with heart-shaped wombs.