Beyond Identical or Fraternal: 6 Rare Types of Twins

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Twins can be a lot more complicated than just identical or fraternal, and the rarer types of twins suggest that we have a lot more to learn about human development.

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My Ultrasound Story

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By Tané Tachyon You had probably heard that I had a miscarriage on 3/23, when I would have been about 14 1/2 weeks pregnant. It was like the miscarriage I had had seven years earlier, in terms of that there was nothing more recognizable than hunks of tissue, and in the amount of tissue and bleeding. It was unlike the miscarriage I had had seven years earlier, in that there was no cramping nor gush of amniotic fluid. There can be a lot of variation in these things depending on why the miscarriage occurs. I did not have any of the warning signs of infection resulting from an incomplete miscarriage, but went to the local women’s health center on 3/28 for a checkup. They thought everything looked fine (and complimented me a lot on my medical knowledge) but were concerned that my blood HCG levels were still at the full-blown pregnancy stage. All my subjective pregnancy symptoms (heartburn, fatigue, gagging, breast tenderness) were also continuing in full bloom. So I went back in for ...
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How a Man’s Unborn Twin Fathered His Child

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An unusual case illustrates how promiscuous DNA can be. It turns out we have a lot of DNA that isn’t our own Paternity tests are well known for producing some unexpected surprises, but the case involving a Washington man presents a new head-scratcher. After undergoing fertility treatments and having a son, the man and his partner were surprised when blood work showed that the boy couldn’t be related to the father. After two paternity tests showed the father only shared 10% of his child’s DNA, the parents feared the fertility clinic had inseminated the mother with another man’s sperm. The couple hired a lawyer, who wrote in to Barry Starr’s Ask a Geneticist blog. Starr, director of outreach activities at Stanford University’s Department of Genetics, suggested that the couple get a 23andMe analysis done. The consumer-based genetic testing company provides more detailed relationship and ancestry type genetic data—using hundreds of thousands of markers on the genome—than the dozen or so ma...
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Am I a Survivor of a Vanished Twin?

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Questions to Discover if You May be a Vanishing twin Survivor Vanishing Twin is a word that’s been used since 2003 to describe the fetus or embryo that was a twin, triplet or other multiple but died early in the pregnancy, leaving no detectable trace at birth or before. The remaining child born is called a Vanishing Twin survivor. This is also known as the vanishing twin phenomenon. There are millions Vanishing Twin survivors in the world today that share some common characteristics. Instructions Step1 See if you feel different from other people. Maybe you have a strange sensation that somehow you don’t really exist, you’re not really here or shouldn’t be here. Step2 Look back to see if you have suffered from depression most of your life, you’ve had long-term problems with food and eating and perhaps you’ve always feared abandonment and rejection. These are common, similar feelings of Vanishing Twin survivors. Step3 Understand that feelings of wanting...
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