A Brazilian woman who recently gave birth to twins has claimed they have different fathers after a test revealed the rare occurrence.
The anonymous 19-year-old, from Minerios in Goias, Brazil, took a paternity test to confirm the babies’ father when they reached eight months.
However, checking their DNA against the man she believed was the dad, the mum was confused to learn that results only came back positive for one of the twins.
She began going through past experiences to get to the bottom of things, remembering that she’d previously had sex with two men on the same day around the time the twins were conceived.
When the second man was tested, he was confirmed as the father of the second baby, in a phenomenon known as heteroparental superfecundation.
The woman’s doctor, Tulio Jorge Franco, told Globo: ‘It is possible to happen when two eggs from the same mother are fertilised by different men. The babies share the mother’s genetic material, but they grow in different placentas.’
According to the physician, it’s a ‘one in a million’ event that he never thought he’d encounter.
It’s believed that there are only 20 other confirmed cases of twins not sharing the same father.
The twin boys are reported to be 16 months old, yet Dr Franco is only now talking publicly about their birth as he’s planning to publish an academic paper on them.
He has been teaching a class on the case to more deeply study the rarity, which occurs when two eggs are fertilised a few hours apart.
As for the babies, they’re happy and healthy, with one of the fathers registering as their dad and supporting the 19-year-old mum.
She told Globo: ‘He takes care of both of them, helps me a lot, and gives them all the necessary support they need.’
