[ How does a couple ensure having twins naturally ( without ART ) ?By having sex during Happy Hours ! ]
The Sunday edition of TOI , had this nondescript article tucked away in one of its inside pages under the section Times Trends . “Woman gets pregnant while pregnant “ it was headlined . Rare are such situations as medical science would have us understand , but the theory behind such an occurrence is in no way dull or drab . Lets take peek into the world of twins or more appropriately “nearly twins “ . As a straight forward uncomplicated condition we have what are known as fraternal ( dizygotic ) or monozycotic twins depending on whether two different ova were fertilized by two different sperms or whether a single fertilized ovum split into two embryos respectively .The difference naturally being that , while the former are just like two different children born at the same time ,the latter are always of the same sex and very similar in all aspects ( identical twins ) . Monozygotic twins very rarely end up as conjoint / Siamese twins ( twins sharing at least some part of their body in common ) .This incidentally is simple of the cases where the fertilization has taken at the same time .Technically however , it is possible that the twins may have been conceived at different times . As terminology goes , there is a condition superfecundation, where one of a pair of twins is conceived one day and the other , a day / couple of days apart but during the same cycle ( in which case they are necessarily fraternal). Since both have been conceived in the same cycle – just a couple of hours apart – they more or less grow similarly and are usually delivered simultaneously. A more intricate matter comes up when a child is conceived and the mother gets pregnant again in one of the subsequent cycles ( which should have stopped anyway ! , but strange are the ways of mother nature ) . Superfetation , is what this is called . Rare in humans but common in some animal species . Just to make things more complicated , imagine a lady who has just conceived and then has a romp with another male in a day or two which too leads to a conception . So what do we get here ? Twins with different fathers !It would be even more mind boggling thinking of such a situation leading to twins being conceived during each of the two different contacts . ( That’s what I would call a true Twin Twin situation )God forbid if any one was to ask the child his sibling history .I am one of set of quadruplets but just have a twin sister .The other pair of brother – sister twins are just my half brother and sister . Go figure ![ Epilogue: A Chinese accidentally got pregnant and delivered Twins. What did she name them ? Jo Hua , So Hua ]