And the Answer Is...

In January 2011, I blogged about how remarkably similar my twin girls look and how they have met their developmental milestones always within a day or so of each other.  Strangers have frequently asked if they are identical but I've told them that they are fraternal since that was what I was told.  I generally don't put a lot of stock in what strangers say anyway because it isn't uncommon for random people to ask my friend with boy/girl twins if her children are identical.  

The thing is I confused them a lot.  I did two years ago and I still do today.

When we discovered our twins at 26 weeks, I was told they are fraternal. This made sense.  (As much as anything can make sense when discovering a bonus baby so late in the game.)  My mom is a twin.  My dad has twin sisters.  The girls had separate sacs and separate placentas and they were a totally spontaneous conception.  

But this summer, I was at my wit's end over their zygosity.  I noticed they had moles in exactly the same places.  I was tired of arguing with strangers.  And I was feeling like a crappy parent for not being able to tell my kids apart.  My husband and I discussed it and decided that there were all sorts of important reasons to know if they came from the same egg. 

So for $109, a bunch of cheek swabs, and two weeks of waiting, we were able to find out that our girls are, in fact, identical.

I felt both relieved and anxious about the results.  It was a great to know that I had a reason for confusing them but, in a way, it also felt like being struck by lightening.  The odds of conceiving identical twins naturally is about 3 in 1000.  The odds of those twins having their own sac and placenta are even lower.  If this freak thing can happen to me, what else can?

Maybe I have met the quota for strange life happenings.  I hope so because my biggest fear in life is that something will happen to my children.  My second biggest fear is that I will have more of them.

Comments

  1. MandyE (Twin Trials and Triumphs)November 5, 2012 at 9:53 AM

    There's never been any question about whether our girls were fraternal...they barely look like sisters some days I think!

    Glad you finally decided to solve this little mystery. For what it's worth, at least you know. :)

    ReplyDelete

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