Twins delivered weeks apart

[Twinkie]

With help from fertility doctors, two women give birth to twin brothers.http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/15002125.htm

Is this Natural? I have on the fence feelings about this.

[flirt]

cant see the link!!!!!!!!!

[Bahama Mama]

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/15002125.htm

Is this Natural? I have on the fence feelings about this.


Well since the couple utilized in-vitro fertilization, the conception itself was not natural. However what happened afterwards was simply a very rare and surprising event in in-vitro practices.

Multiple eggs were extracted from the lady (which is always the case in in-vitro) and fertilized with sperm from her husband. In this case half of the embryoes were implanted in the lady, and the other half in the surrogate around the same time period. This was to ensure I guess that at least one (most likely the surrogate) would carry the embryoes to term, since the lady had so many unsuccessful attempts.

To everybody's surprise both women became pregnant, and both gave birth to baby boys. They are fraternal twins, in the sense that they were both conceived (through in-vitro) at the same time and by the same maternal and paternal genetic material, but just implanted each in different women and carried to term by different women. Keeping in mind that the surrogate is not genetically related to the babies, she just acted as a vessel during the gestation period.

[Izemi-Clem]

Hail

I doubt that these children can actually be considered a twin.

Twins have always been considered to be children who have been born from the same mother during the same period of delivery; whether or not that period of delivery is a few minutes or a few hours it doesn't matter, both babies were in utero at the same time.

Sharing the same genetic material from both mother and father would simply make them siblings.
Having your brother or sister being born a few weeks from you certainly is unusual and probably that's why they are being considered fraternal twins, but in the true sense of the term I would disagree with them being considered a twin.

Maybe we have reason to develop a new terminology; surrogate twins


Izemi-Clem