Not Twins? Its Double Pregnancy!

As I was enjoying my morning coffee while watching the morning show on 7, I learned that it is possible for double pregnancy can happen to anyone... especially if your hormones are always on the overdrive.

So I decided to google it and found this article:


"A woman who is expecting a baby has stunned doctors after a routine ultrasound visit revealed that she had become pregnant for a second time — a condition so rare that there only ten other recorded cases.

Julia Grovenburg, 31, had an appointment for an ultrasound check on an 11-week-old foetus, a baby girl she and her husband, Todd, have named Jillian — only to be told that she was carrying a separate baby, two weeks younger.

“We feel very blessed, but the truth is that I gagged, I started getting sick, that’s not a joke,” said Mrs Grovenburg, an American, of the moment that she found out she had become pregnant a second time. “My ultrasound [technician] Susan was in total, utter shock. My husband was laughing.”

Unlike twins, which are conceived at the same time, Mrs Grovenburg has two foetuses because of a process known as “superfetation”, where embryos are conceived at different times.

The second foetus is male, and the couple have called him Hudson. Jillian’s due date is December 24 and her brother’s is January 10. Doctors have warned, however, that both babies will probably be delivered at the same time, in early December.

“We tried for three years to have kids, and nothing ever happened,” said Mrs Grovenburg, from Arkansas. “We even refused to do in vitro or fertility drugs because we didn’t want multiples. I guess God was having the last laugh.”

Dr Karen Boyle, of the Greater Baltimore Medical Centre, told ABC News that superfetation was extremely rare. “There is no prevalence or incidence in the literature. I could only find about ten reported cases,” she said.

Superfetation is common in some species of animals, including rodents, horses, sheep and marsupials, but extremely rare in humans. Extraordinarily, two cases were recorded in Britain in 2007. Two couples conceived children three weeks apart.

Dr Boyle said that, depending on the time between the two conceptions, superfetation could be dangerous for the younger baby, who could be born prematurely. “It [the second conception] can happen up to 24 days later than the first conception, and then you’re putting the second baby at risk for lung development problems."

In the Grovenburgs' case, Dr Boyle said that two weeks would not put the younger baby at much of a risk for health problems.

Mrs Grovenburg said: “It’s fun — we feel blessed to have something so rare and at this point they are both totally healthy.”

Mr Grovenburg said of the moment they were told of the second baby: “[We were] both in shock. We were trying to put the timelines together. We had known she had had a migraine and been at the hospital and actually had a pregnancy test at the time that one would’ve been conceived,” he said, adding that the test was negative.

Patrick O’Brien, consulting obstetrician and spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said: “It’s a rare thing because when you conceive, your hormones change dramatically. Those changes stop you ovulating and they stop you conceiving.”

In May 2007, in Benfleet, Essex, Harriet and Thomas Mullineux, conceived three weeks apart, were born to Amelia Spence and George Herrity.

“It is hard to get our heads around the fact that I was pregnant with two babies at the same time and they aren’t twins,” Ms Spence said at the time. “We looked at the screen and the doctor pointed out that one foetus still looked like a blob, whereas the other had four visible limbs. It was such a marked difference. It was really strange to see. The doctor said that he had only read about it in textbooks.”"

So what is double pregnancy? It is certainly not about being pregnant with twins. It is the situation that occurs when two foetuses exist in the uterus after eggs have been fertilised at different times.

Some literature described double pregnancy as a situation when a woman either

(a), has 2 eggs implant that are from two separate ovulations- within a day or two of each other, or

(b) the woman has a rare condition where she has either 2 separate uterus' (only heard of this once), or a divided uterus and an egg implants in both sides. It is very, very, very uncommon and usually either one or both of the fetus's don't survive.

Well this is certainly a new information for me and to date there have been only 10 successful and survived cases recorded on this entire earth. God certainly works in mysterious ways!!