There’s no doubt that sex education seeks to bust myths like ‘you can’t get pregnant standing up’ or ‘you can’t get pregnant on your period’.
But until now, the playground cry of ‘you can’t get pregnant through anal sex’ was assumed to be a biological truth. Now, however, a doctor has made the astonishing claim that he treated a woman who conceived through anal sex.
Dr Brian Steixner, a urologist at the Jersey Urology Group in Atlantic City, said he saw the unthinkable phenomenon when he was a medical student, Men’s Health reports.
At the time, he was part of a team caring for a woman born with a rare medical condition called ‘cloacal malformation’. This occurs when, very early in pregnancy, the rectum, urethra and vagina fail to separate into different tubes.
This means urine and faeces drain into a common channel which opens in the perineum – where the anus is normally located – according to Great Ormond Street Hospital.
It only occurs in one in 50,000 births – and is normally treated by surgery to create three separate channels as well as two openings – an anus a vagina. When she was younger, the woman had such an operation, but the procedure went wrong. Either through a mistake by surgeons – or perhaps because of the way her body reacted to the trauma of the surgery – a fistula formed.
This is an abnormal connection between organs – and in her case it meant her womb became connected to her rectum. Every month, during menstruation she bled from her anus – but her vagina was a dead-end.
After doing a whole bunch of X-rays, we determined that she got pregnant from having anal sex Dr Brian Steixner, a urologist at the Jersey Urology Group
Dr Steixner told Men’s Health the woman reported she only had anal sex before getting pregnant – presumably because it was not possible to be penetrated in the vagina.
‘After doing a whole bunch of X-rays, we determined that she got pregnant from having anal sex,’ he told Men’s Health journalists. And in a later interview with its sister magazine Women’s Health, he added: ‘It blew my mind.’ Doctors decided any form of natural childbirth would be unsafe and therefore opted to perform a C-section on the patient. Despite never seeing the patient again, Dr Steixner maintains the anecdote his ‘greatest story ever’. ‘
They totally lied to us in 9th grade health class,’ he said. Cloacal malformation is a problem present at birth that only affects girls. Very early in pregnancy, the rectum, urethra and vagina fail to separate into separate tubes.
This means that urine and faeces drain into a common channel opening in the perineum – the area where the anus and vagina are normally located.
It occurs in one in 50,000 births and can be associated with other congenital malformations.
Cloacal malformation occurs very early in pregnancy, around five to six weeks after conception.
It is not known what stops the rectal, urethral and vaginal tubes separating but it is unlikely to be caused by the mother’s lifestyle during conception or early pregnancy.
Women with cloacal malformation have a single drainage channel or tube in the perineum instead of a separate rectum, urethra and vagina.
It is a complex problem, best dealt with at a specialist centre with input from both surgeons and urologists.
Normally, it is treated with surgery to create three channels as well as an anus and vagina.
This is to provide the potential for the child to achieve normal bowel and bladder control, normal sexual and reproductive function and to protect the kidneysin later life.
