A 20-year old Bangladeshi woman was in for an overwhelming surprise last week when she delivered twins, 26 days after having given birth to a boy.

According to news reports from Dhaka, Arifa Sultana Iti from Sharsha Upazila was rushed to the Khulna Medical College hospital in nearby Jessore on 25 February, following complications with her pregnancy.

Within hours, she gave birth to a premature baby boy through normal delivery and returned home soon after with her baby. But the doctors had missed the presence of her second uterus.

“She did not realise that she was still pregnant with the twins” the hospitals chief gynaecologist Sheila Poddar told the AFP news agency.

Her waters broke again 26 days after her first birth and she returned to the hospital again on March 22, she said.

Dr Poddar told the bbdnews24 online website that an ultrasonic test revealed that Ms Iti had two uteri and to her amazement she ended up delivering twins: a boy and a girl through Caesarean section surgery.

“The first baby boy was born from one womb and the twins from the other,” Dr Poddar said, adding that it was a ‘rare incident’ which she had never come across earlier.