Woman Gives Birth To Twins With Two Different Fathers

A US woman, who was applying to make her ex-boyfriend pay child support for her twin daughters, was shocked when it was discovered that the man was only the father of one of the girls.

The woman told the Board of Social Services that a man she had relationship with, was the father of her twins, therefore, he should pay child support.

The Board ordered the man to undertake a DNA paternity test, Mirror reports. When the test was carried out, it showed that the former boyfriend was almost certainly the father of one twin, but wasn’t the father of the other.

The shocked woman confessed that she had slept with another man a week after she believed she was impregnated by her boyfriend.

Judge Sohail Mohammad said that he had researched the subject and found just two other court cases of a woman giving birth to twins from separate fathers. Such phenomenon occurs in one out of every 13,000 reported paternity cases involving twins.

It seems amazing and medically impossible, but a woman can give birth to twins with two fathers when she has sex with two different men in the same week.

Obstetrician-gynaecologist Jennifer Wu explained that sperm can remain viable for up to five days and ovulating women can produce more than one egg, meaning a woman could become impregnated twice. When both sets have the same father, normal fraternal twins result. When two different men are involved, the phenomenon is known as superfecundation.

Dr Cynthia Austin, a fertility expert, said that this unique phenomenon is particularly obvious when the babies are of different races, but that “the vast majority of times, twins with different fathers, it goes unnoticed”.

As a result of the court ruling, the woman’s original partner has to pay child support only for one child.