Thursday
May212009
Twins are Half Brothers
Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 1:56AM
In order to understand the title, here's a new term for you....heteropaternal superfecundation. What it means is that, Mia Washington, the mother of 11-month-old twin boys, was having an affair. The twins have different fathers.
After noticing physical facial differences between the two boys, Justin and Jordan; Mia Washington and her boyfriend, James Harrison, decided to take a paternity test. They went to Dallas DNA Lab Clear Diagnostics.
According to the paternity test, there’s a 99.999 percent chance Justin and Jordan do not have the same father, and zero percent chance they do. The lab has never seen this type of result, nor do they expect to see it again.
“It is very crazy. Most people don’t believe it can happen, but it can,” said Clear Diagnostics President Genny Thibodeaux.
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When twins have two fathers, doctors call it heteropaternal superfecundation. It’s so rare; there are only a handful of documented cases in the world. Washington admits she had an affair that resulted in two babies, born at the same time, fathered by two different men.
“Out of all people in America and of all people in the world, it had to happen to me. I’m very shocked,” Washington said.
The medical marvel can happen when a woman releases multiple eggs during ovulation. If she has more than one sexual partner within the same time period, sperm cells can fertilize two separate eggs.
"Sperm can survive up to five days inside a woman's body, so a woman could sleep with different men several days apart, and get pregnant not once, but twice."
In the case of the Texas twins, there was never any health threat to the babies during the pregnancy because they were fathered by different men.
“It’s not a baby issue since they had different placentas,” Dr. Finkelstein, a Manhattan obstetrician, explains. “The two babies are totally separate entities. Babies can have different blood types even if they have the same father.”
Washington wants people to know she takes full responsibility for her actions.
“I’m trying to let everybody else know: Don’t put yourself in my shoes, because it can hurt and it does hurt, but you still have to go on with life,” she said.
James Harrison said he’s forgiven his fiancé's infidelity and has vowed to stay with her and raise both boys as his own. However for the record Jordan is James' son. Justin's father is someone else.
“It’s a day by day thing. It’s going to take time to build that trust like we had,” James Harrison said.
Washington and Harrison also have more news:
“Five months ago we found out that I was pregnant again and our new baby is due to arrive in the autumn,” she told the Daily Mail. “Right now I’m fully committed to taking care of my family and making sure their needs are met. I can guarantee there’ll be no questions raised this time around.”