Twin Education

Since finding out there are two humans in my body, I've gotten a lot of questions about how you know if they're fraternal or identical. Today, I'm here to share the basics on knowing what they are. Twins 101, if you will.

You may already know that our two little ones are identical, or what I'm amping up to be "the scary kind." I've seen The Parent Trap too many times to be even somewhat calm about this, especially when we approach them being school-age. (I say this like they're 3 or something...nope. Still in the oven.) It should come as no surprise that I've already thought through strategies to helping their teachers, because what decent mom of twins would leave the teachers hanging???? Ok. Off my tangent.

Identical twins: Sometimes defined as "freaks of nature" in the twin world. It's not really clear to me (lots of research, trust me!) if genetics plays a role in identical twins being conceived, but it appears not. They have the exact same DNA and come from one egg splitting after conception. There is a thin membrane that separates them in utero, so they have their own apartments, as one of our sonogram techs called it, but they feed from the same fridge, aka the placenta. (This made me think of Joey going to Monica and Rachel's fridge all the time.)

  

Not my twins, stole it from Google images, just like the rest of the
pics in this post. 

Since they're identical and share a placenta, there's a handful of complications that can arise during pregnancy. One fridge for two apartments would be an issue outside of the metaphor, so you can imagine with a pregnancy what could happen.
Or maybe you can't, but you know it sounds bad.
Twin-Twin Syndrome results in one of the babies getting more nutrients from the placenta than the other, meaning one keeps growing and the other does not. Should this happen, mama has to have surgery and get some blood vessels from the placenta ablated (set on fire!) to stop this from happening. With bi-weekly trips to the high-risk doctor (actually we met him once in January and it's been sonographers ever since), they can monitor the boys' growth and make sure this isn't happening.

Genders? Identicals share the same DNA, therefore, share the same gender, unless there is some mutilation genetically. 

Fraternal Twins: More likely to occur with higher age of the mother and/or when fertility drugs are being used. STILL could happen to anyone.
Two eggs, two sperm, two placentas. Separate DNA...so you can tell them apart.
Can't say I'm all that educated on fraternals since I'm not having them. But, that's the basics.
Genders? Fraternals can be any combo! Boy/boy, girl/girl, girl/boy. 

  

Separate sacs=fraternals.

                                        

There are other sub-categories of twins beyond the fraternal and identical labels. Mono-mono, di-di, mono-di...A boring but informational page can be found here if you are interested.