Just stumbled across this story and thought you might be interested.

Woman pregnant with two babies

So, are they twins?

Is the crux of being a twin being born at the same time? or coming from the same pregnancy? is it the same pregnancy for these two babies?

what an odd situation

I have read of women pg with twins who gave birth weeks apart as one was birthed for medical reasons, the other left to gestate nice and cosy. Does that make them any less "twins"?

What about twins born on separate days, or in different years?? Does that make them not twins?

Fraternal twins aren't the one pg, just "womb buddies", but they are still twins.

I reckon if they are in there at the same time, they're twins - doesn't matter when they come out, or if they are from a single/multiple conception.

We have two frozen embryos that we jokingly refer to as "conception triplets" as they and DD were all made in the one petri dish!!! The frosties are just refered to as "the twins".

Taken from the article itself



They're twins. The doctor and journalist need to look up the difference between superfetation and superfecundation. And stop selling tripe like this to people. The disparity in difference between gestational age is not outside acceptable parameters.

Why do people sell their stories to news outlets when they have more holes in them than Swiss cheese?

Concurrent siblings?

Only in Utah.


$$$$$$$$$$

I know someone who had triplets this year, apparantly it was a set of id twins and the other baby was measuring 2 weeks behind right from the start.

They are not twins plus another, they are triplets. What a ridiculus article.

Cool story!

I can see why they are saying it because the woman has TWO uterus ( uterii? lol)

The definition of twins is to be born at the same birth but even this has anomalies.

But as the article said this has happened before where the children were born 60 odd days apart!

I suppose it is all technical.

Being in the Mother at the same time would constitute them being twins for me.

By some forms of definition I have read magazine articles ( new idea etc ) that have latched onto the theory that people have had twins, triplets, quads years apart simply because they were all embryos fertilised at the same IVF cycle and then subsequently frozen.

If this was accepted as a definition then there are thousands and thousands of "multiples" siblings in the world of differing ages.

I suppose it is as they will both be "eating" the same things at the same time from their mum. If anything happens to mum ie cold flu illness and medication or a car accident they will both be affected the same.

Oh the disparity in dates doesn't bother me at all, that simply makes me go ok, fraternal.

For all intents and purposes, the mother is most definitely pregnant with twins and I would think a quite high risk pregnancy being each in their own uterus.

However, I wonder if even over simplified biologically speaking, are two fetuses growing each in their own uterus still considered twins?

Maybe I need to look up the definition of twins


Posted at the same time as you DG! I think I agree

kabailz13 - Down the bottom of that article they linked to that twit Grovenburg women who is still claiming she fell pregnant whilst already pregnant (depsite the scientific inability to prove that of course). Twins that aren't twins. Yeah, whatever. I don't get why some women have the need to make their lives/children/pregnancies extra 'special' or unique somehow. Babies and pregnancy are amazing enough aren't they? Twins are unique enough aren't they?

I would think two fetuses growing in two separate wombs in the one mother would be twins. One gestational 'carrier' and multiple babies, although not sharing the same womb, they share the same 'host' for lack of a better word..I know what you mean though about the dictionary definitions and honestly, I don't know on that mark either as some of them use the word similar as the definition of twin and many frats just aren't IYKWIM.

If she has two screamers, two to feed at once, two to settle at once, etc there will be no doubting that she has twins.

Our identical boys have always measured days apart, at different times it's varied between 3 and 7 days! But we know they're identical twins, they're just different sizes

My two always measured days apart too from the very 1st scan.. Crap i should've sold the story

I did see a doco a few years back on multiples. It had an english lady in it that had two uterus and conceived many weeks apart. You saw her bringing the baby boy home still very pregnant with the other bub. She called them twins. By the looks of it she was at the Dr's alot. Must be extremely high risk.

Just to add my story about babies measuring differently:
My twins were measuring 8 days apart at 15 weeks, 2 weeks apart at 20 weeks, and 4 weeks apart at 30 weeks. They are identical twins, one with IUGR.

Me thinks they be twins



Yes I have quads born in 2 pairs 3years apart. With 3 still in the freezer I could end up with septuplets LMAO.

I have a friend and this exact thing happened to her (so its not the first case like the media make it out to be).

She was 3 months prenant with her first DD when she fell pregnant with her 2nd DD as a result of having 2 seperate uterus'.

There were no complications with the pregnancy and both girls were born happy and healthy!

(sorry i don't belong in this section).

Just interested were they born at at the same time or seperate?

They were born seperatley - 3 months apart.

My brother was going out with a girl who was either 5 months younger or older than her sister.

The mum got pregnant when she was already 4 months pregnant - not sure if she had two uterus's but the babeis were both born full term.

Would these girls be considered twins ?

Paisley -

As amazing as it sounds, I'm always super skeptical when I hear things like this.

First, you have to disregard biology and the reproductive system. The hormonal changes that take place in a womans body when she falls pregnant are massive and provide barriers to further pregnancies being able to establish. The progesterone that is released by the placenta blocks further ovulation from happening, so, you'd have to have a pretty ordinary pituitary system, not one uterus but two (the other is full with a baby already remember!), and your husband would have to have some super dooper sperm, as the change in the mucus alone during pregnancy makes their job a million times harder.

Unless someone can show me a reputable, published case in a medical journal of superfetation occuring in humans, I just don't believe it to be possible. Trashy Thats Life type stories aside but of course...

My thoughts exactly! Without even thinking too hard about it, how is the woman able to ovulate once she's already pregnant due to hormonal and other changes? I'm VERY skeptical!!

For those struggling with this concept, I haven't looked for scientific evidence for the whole gamute of these stories, but I remember reading this one:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3927...ce-a-month.html

A quick scan of the medical literature shows a handful of cases, all start by explaining that it's very rare. Most (but not all) cases have the second baby conceived in the cycle after the first. Most also involve ART and a spontaneous fertilisation (two or more conceptions close together), reproductive complications (e.g. ectopic pregnancy and a subsequent fertilisation) and there's one reported case involving a bicornate uterus but I can't find it online to read specifics.

There's a review published this year in Biological Reviews "The concept of superfetation: a critical review on a 'myth' in mammalian reproduction", Kathleen Roellig, Brandon R. Menzies, Thomas B. Hildebrandt and Frank Goeritz. They discuss human cases.

FWIW The medical literature refers to babies conceived in different cycles but co-gestated as twins, triplets etc.

Georgie01 -

I'd be interested in reading the details of the specific cases. When the baby is conceived in the second cycle after the first for example, how have they come to this conclusion? Is it just discordant growth?

The ectopic pregnancy would not result in live twins, so therefore whilst superfetation may possibly have occured (depending on the gestational age difference in the two fetuses would be the 'best guess'), no live birth of multiple children has resulted from it, and as such, there are no 'twins' born at the same time.

If the second baby is conceived in the second cycle after the first, unless as I said before the gestating woman in question has pituitary issues or other extra ordinary conditions that make it within the realm of possibility, it is more than likely superfecundation occuring. Multiple fertilisations resulting from different acts of copulation.

I'm also really curious as to how they 'know' the fetus or child is definitely the age they have determined them to be? Have we really leapt so far forward in science and technology while my back was turned that we can now test our blood to find out exactly the moment we were conceived? Or is it more simple, harking back to our frontier roots where we cut off a limb and count the rings?

I'm just so skeptical, but thats probably showing

Gumby the cases they describe don't rely on discordant growth at later stages of pregnancy (my own twins would have met that criterion). The examples describe cases where early scans show gestational ages 3-4 weeks apart, where the ectopic fetus is several weeks ahead of the one in the uterus and US examination of neuroanatomy development in the fetuses.

I'm not a biologist but the review is in a good journal and seems critically solid and objective (I do read a lot of scientific literature in other areas). If you PM an e-mail address to me I can send the papers that I can easily rustle up. You sound much more knowledgeable than me about his area so I'd be interested to hear what you think (I hadn't heard the terms superfetation and superfecundation before reading this thread so just spent an hour or so reading about it out of interest).

They are only measuring 4 days apart. How silly

I would count them as twins if it is a "twin pregnancy"... ie that the woman is pregnant with more than one baby at the same time. To me a second uterus doesn't mean they aren't twins. Given they are so close in age I wonder whether the birth of the first twin would trigger the second to be born at the same time.

They are kidding?! Heck mine are ID and measured up to a week apart at times so by their conclusions they are two seperate pregnancies! Idiots

The crux of the issue is the timing of conception really. The reason superfecundation is possible (and, as per paradox's link, it is highly possible for women to have multiple ovulations within one cycle, how the heck do you suppose so many of us are in here in the first place ) is because of multiple ovulations, the time it takes for the sperm and egg to meet, decide to play friends and then successfully implant. This can take days. Once that embryo implants and the hormonal changes begin though, you are considered pregnant. Getting pregnant again, once you are already pregnant, should be virtually impossible for humans.

Superfecundation is where different coital acts have taken place and both acts have resulted in the formation of a viable pregnancy. Easily achievable, the window is there for it to happen, and, this is how you get twins from different fathers, still twins, not conceived at the same time, but, twins.

Georgie - Will PM it to you shortly, I'm always very interested to read stuff like this!

On the discordant growth issue though in early pregnancy



For my still questioning mind, a lot of my hesitance to believe despite this is that ultrasound technology is not entirely accurate, and, depending on the level of skill of the operator, the size of the mother, the way the ultrasound was performed (abdo or internal), 3-4 weeks in gestational age in early pregnancy is mere millimetres isn't it? Anatomical development is also questionable, we hear of babies born at 39 weeks with poorly developed lungs, ID twins with differing medical conditions in utero and post delivery, not enough factual science to sway me though, thus far.

alphawife - Second uterus definitely doesn't make them any less twins. At least the OB could make the statement of them being fraternal without a shadow of a doubt, lol, and I imagine it would carry its own high risk complications as well. Having a second uterus simply would make it within the acceptable realms of possibility (along with pituitary issues etc) for me to believe that the twins could possibly be a result of true superfetation in humans.

Ok so I have heard of a woman pregnant with two babies at the same time but they turned out to have two different fathers. Does this make them twins?? Would they have to have the same parents to be classed as real twins? Apparently the woman had a couple of blokes on the go at the same time and had sex only a day or two apart and fell pregnant to both of them. Apparently it was only confirmed after the babies were born and DNA tests were done as she didn't know who the father was, turned out they both were!