A UK woman that gave birth to only the 14th pair of ‘super twins’ in recorded history has said she didn’t believe the doctors when they told her.
39-year-old Rebecca Roberts from Wiltshire in England last year welcomed twins that were born on the same day but conceived three weeks apart.
The phenomenon of becoming pregnant while already pregnant is known as ‘superfetation’ and is extremely rare. Doctors believe it is linked to the fertility treatment Rebecca was receiving.
Speaking to Tom Dunne on Moncrieff this afternoon, she said she had never heard of superfetation until it happened to her.
“It is very rare,” she said. “It is something that is not supposed to happen, especially not in humans so no, we don’t really hear the word day-to-day at all.
“We were trying to get pregnant for over a year and I am not getting any younger – I was 38 at the time – and my doctor gave me a fertility drug just to help me with ovulation and that is where things got a little bit crazy.”
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She said she had been for two scans, seven and ten weeks after finding out she was pregnant and was only told about one baby.
“Then I had my routine twelve-week scan and there I am lying down on the couch and the scenographer is scanning me,” she said.
“We had already had a conversation about my previous scans and she was completely silent and then she said to me, ‘do you know you are having twins?’
“I didn’t believe her. I was like, ‘no we’re only having one baby’ and then she swung the screen around, and low and behold, there were two babies there.
Rebecca said doctors initially assumed they had simply missed the second baby in the early scans; however, later on in her pregnancy they noticed that “twin two was three weeks smaller than twin one and it was consistent growth between the two twins.”
Superfetation
She said doctors then confirmed that she was having a superfetation pregnancy - meaning she had become pregnant while already pregnant - something that only happens to a “very, very, very small percentage of people.”
“My doctor said it has probably happened because I was on a fertility drug,” she said.
“There are a few other cases documented where these people were also on a fertility treatment – be it something like mine, with ovulation stimulation or IVF – that this kind of thing has happened but it is so rare.
“There have actually only been 13 documented cases literally ever in the whole world and we are number 14. Most of them have been down to fertility treatments.”
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Rebecca gave birth to twins Noah and Rosalie last September.
Rosalie was conceived three weeks after Noah and was “super tiny” but “really, really cute” when she was born.
“They are fantastic,” she said. “They are really, really lovely babies and they are doing really well as well. Rosalie is catching up with her growth. She must have tripled her birth length and she is doing really well.
“They love each other so much. We can lay them down next to each other and they instantly interact. They really do have that proper twin bond that people talk about.”
You can listen back to the full interview with Rebecca Roberts and her husband Rhys Weaver here:
