Lying on an examination table with her legs spread, 16-year-old Annie Charlotte heard the words no one wants to hear from a sexual health nurse: ‘Oh my god!’
She’d gone to the clinic to have a coil fitted in a bid to combat her unbelievably heavy periods, but as soon as the nurse went to insert the speculum, it was clear something wasn’t right.
‘”Oh my god!” is not what you want to hear when a nurse has her hand in your vagina,’ Annie tells Metro. ‘She said there was something in the way of her fingers and that I should go and see a gynaecologist.’
Two weeks, one ultrasound and one MRI later, Annie found out the problem – she had two vaginas. Not only that, but she had two uteruses, two cervixes, two vaginas. ‘But only one set of ovaries,’ she adds.
The reason it had gone undetected for so long was because there had only been one external opening to the vagina.
‘I was mortified… absolutely horrified,’ remembers Annie, now 26. ‘The gynaecologist was a guy which made me super uncomfortable – and then I was told it meant I might not be able to have kids.
‘I remember leaving the doctors and sitting in the car with my mum in silence because we didn’t know what to say. At 16, I just wanted to be normal, but I couldn’t have felt more different – I was so upset.’
The condition, known as uterine didelphys or double uterus, occurs while in the womb. Typically a foetus has two ducts which fuse together to create one uterus, but if they don’t join together it leaves two uteruses.
It’s very rare, affecting an estimated 0.3% of the population and it can lead to fertility issues, or result in two different pregnancies at the same time.
The diagnosis also revealed why Annie had struggled with her periods, to the point that often nothing could stem the flow. ‘The issue was I’d been putting tampons up the wrong vagina,’ she explains.
‘Each uterus bleeds at a different time, sometimes I’d have a period for two weeks straight, or I’d have a period and then have only a two week gap before I bled again.’
If they did menstruate at the same time, which has happened to Annie before, she would sometimes pass out from the blood loss.
Since her diagnosis, she’s been taking the pill to make her periods lighter – although she has to take two a day instead of one to double the dose, which does have its downsides.
‘I often feel really angry, quite depressed and overly emotional,’ admits Annie.
Initially, she had begged the doctor to operate and give her a single vagina, butwas refused because she was so young. Instead, Annie was told to wait until she was ready to think about starting a family. However,she’s received a lot of mixed messages from doctors regarding her fertility.
‘One specialist gynaecologist said in the most nonchalant way: “you’re probably going to have multiple miscarriages“,’ she remembers. ‘Then another doctor told me I could be nine months pregnant and four months pregnant at the same time. The not knowing is so stressful, and I don’t want to be infertile.’
The only comfort Annie, who lives in Surrey, can take, is that she doesn’t want children until her mid-thirties, so hopes that fertility treatments and IVF will have advanced even further by then.
‘If I wanted kids now I’d struggle with it but for now I’m putting it to the back of my mind,’ she adds.
As she got older, Annie never told anyone about her condition. It was only when she went to university and began dating that realised she couldn’t hide it forever.
‘The first time I ever told someone was after I lost my virginity to them – god knows why I blurted it out,’ she laughs. ‘I just lay next to him and said “I have two vaginas”. He looked at me like I was crazy but then just replied “okay” and never brought it up again.
‘I slept with another guy and told him after too. He said he hadn’t felt them and asked to have a look. They actually always ask to look and I’ve never had a negative reaction which is comforting.’
Her biggest worry was having to lose her virginity twice – and remembers it being a ‘painful’ experience, having sex in each vagina for the first time.
Annie, who is currently single, has been told that her two vaginas feel exactly the same as one, but if a finger is placed in each and brought together, you can feel the wall that separates them.
She also says that her right vagina is bigger and deeper, so men’s penises tend to slide into that one during sex in the missionary position, but if she’s doing the doggy style, it slides into the left one.
‘If someone has a large penis I’ll tell them to push into my right one because the left one is a lot shallower, so it makes it more comfortable,’ she explains.
Apart from fertility issues, the other downside to having two vaginas is that revealing her condition makes any relationship ‘very sexual, very quickly’ because it brings up the topic of sex early on, but as a ‘sexual person’ she doesn’t mind it too much.
Aware of her uniqueness, in 2020, Annie even created an OnlyFans account, where she’s known as the Two Pussy Princess, and has since made more than £2 million from the site.
She had been at home in lockdown without any uni work and spent her time sexting multiple boys, until she saw an Instagram post about a girl and how much she made from the platform.
‘I questioned why I was sending these guys sexy videos for free, so I made an account,’ she remembers. ‘I was worried about people accusing me of lying but I know it’s true, and that’s what really matters.
‘I have two vaginas, I was made for this industry,’ she jokes.
A one-in-50 million case...
A mum born with two uteruses welcomed twins, conceiving one baby through IVF in one uterus and the other baby naturally in her other uterus, back in 2023.
Madeline Kaklikos, 24, and her husband, Jon, 27, welcomed their miracle twin boys, Cole and Nate, that February following ten rounds of fertility treatment over three years.
Medics described Madeline’s case as one-in-50 million, due to the fact they were both conceived using different methods and were each developed in a different uterus.
Madeline said: ‘After ten rounds of fertility treatment and years of trying to conceive, it never crossed our minds that we would fall pregnant naturally while undergoing IVF.
‘I’d already been diagnosed with PCOS in 2017, when I was 18, and knew it would be difficult to conceive.
‘However, during an ultrasound to investigate further, it was discovered that I actually have two uteruses and I was diagnosed with uterine didelphys (UD).’
Doctors suggested the couple try IVF, and two embryos were implanted into Madeline’s ‘more accessible uterus’ but unfortunately didn’t take.
In June 2022 they got the call they were pregnant but it was at the 10-week scan that Madeline learned she was expecting twins, with a second spontaneous baby in her second uterus.
Because of her condition, she couldn’t deliver her babies naturally but had a successful C-section at 34 weeks, before being able to take her babies home 17 days later.
A decade on from being diagnosed, Annie has gone from feeling embarrassed to embracing having two vaginas.
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‘If you asked me at 16, I’d have said “get rid of it” but now, I wouldn’t change it for the world,’ she says.
‘People are just curious about my body, not negative, so I’ve begun to really accept it rather than hating myself.
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‘It’s become my party trick, revealing I have two vaginas. People think it’s really cool and it’s helped me learn to love myself.’
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