You’d think that twins can only be fathered by one man, right? Think again.
In New Jersey, USA recently, a mother involved in a paternity case found out -- much to everyone’s surprise --that her twin girls had not one, but two dads.
We'll say it again: her twins had different fathers!
According to a Time news report, the twins’ mum (who is known as TM), had sought government childcare benefits from her romantic partner (identified as AS), saying he was responsible for the children.
However, a paternity test showed that while this man was certainly the father of one of the twins, he wasn’t of the other.
The background to the case
It all started when TM, who was seeking welfare support for her girls, told Social Services that AS was the father of her twins.
Following this, Social Services, wanting him to pay child support for the twins who were born in January 2013, filed an application to establish his paternity. But meanwhile, the mother of the twins admitted in a testimony that she had sex with another man within just a week of sleeping with AS.
This resulted in a paternity test to find out who the twins’ real father was. The results of the test were surprising to say the least, revealing that each man had fathered a twin each!
Reports say that Passaic County Superior Court Judge Sohail Mohhamed, who led the court proceedings, ruled that each man will now pay child support for the child he fathered.
How is this even possible?
The ruling reportedly cited a 1997 article published by Dr. Karl-Hanz Wurzinger, a DNA expert. Dr. Wurzinger, in his article, claims that one in every 13,000 reported paternity cases involving twins have different dads.
Here’s how it happens, according to Dr. Keith Eddleman, director of obstetrics at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. During ovulation, a woman can release more than one egg within the same menstrual cycle. If she had sex with two different men during this fertile window of approximately a week, their sperm could separately fertilise each egg.
This is because the sperm from the first man can remain in the woman's fallopian tube, where it can remain viable for seven to 10 days. An egg, meanwhile, has a lifespan of 12 to 48 hours.
So, says Dr. Eddleman, "there is about a week's time for potential overlap and the fertilization of two eggs by two sperm from two separate acts of intercourse with different men."
This unusual phenomenon is known as superfecundation and twins with different dads are called bipaternal or heteropaternal twins.
CNN.com quotes Dr. Eddleman as saying, "It is more common than we think. In many situations, you would never know because there is no reason to do a paternity test on twins."
Also, the medical community believe this happens more frequently than, say 50 years ago "as a result of promiscuity, reproductive technologies, ovulation induction, and other factors", said Judge Mohammed in his ruling.
You can watch the CNN report on this story here:
Mums, have you ever heard anything like this story? If you were as amazed as we were, why not share your thoughts with us by leaving a comment below? We would love to hear from you!