It turns out it's scientifically possible to have twins who have different dads — and this woman just did it
A New Jersey mom who recently applied for child support found out that the man she was bringing to court only fathered one of her twins.
The other baby — born at the same time as the first — had a different father.
It's a phenomenon known to the medical community as heteropaternal superfecundation (hetero meaning different, pater meaning father, and fecund meaning fertile)(Ho meaning Ho).
Here's how it can happen: Two male partners have sex with the same female partner. One man’s sperm fertilize one of the woman's eggs while the other man's sperm fertilize another one of her eggs. This all has to happen in less than a week, doctors estimate, since sperm are only viable for about five days.
Think about your standard case of fraternal (non-identical) twins, suggests Miller. In this scenario, two different eggs from the same female partner get fertilized by one male partner. Two of the woman's eggs, two of the same man's sperm. In heteropaternal superfecundation, the same thing happens, only instead of two sperm from the same man fertilizing two different eggs, two different sperm from two different male partners are fertilizing two eggs.
"In this case you have two different sperm, one for each egg," says Miller.
How rare is this?
Doctors assume that heteropaternal superfecundation is infrequent, but it's hard to tell for sure, Miller says.Most known cases of the phenomenon have only been brought to light for legal reasons, or when someone orders a paternity test. A 1992 study, for example, found that amongst all the cases involving twins where one partner was questioning the paternity of another, superfecundation had occurred about 2.4% of the time.
It turns out it's scientifically possible to have twins who have different dads — and this woman just did it
If you have two partners within the same week, this can happen.
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