Lots of nights as I'm falling asleep, I put my TV on sleep timer and listen to Mystery Diagnosis. I love Discovery Health. Recently, I heard a preview for a documentary called "I am my own Twin"
"Babies are being born split right down the middle, half black and half white, a testicle on one side and a vagina on the other. Explore the extraordinary medical phenomena that causes two different babies to fuse together in the womb."
Wait. What?
So two fertilized eggs, which would eventually have been fraternal twins, sometimes fuse in the womb very early on and instead of two babies , just one baby is born who is also his/her own twin because this unusual baby carries two sets of DNA! Why this happens is a mystery.
This was discovered when a woman lost custody of her children because DNA tests showed that they were not actually hers. She was pregnant, and the court ordered someone to witness the birth of her next child. When they tested the DNA of that child, it also did not match the mother's DNA. This is because she was her own twin. Depending on where they sampled her DNA from (literally down to the exact strand of hair), the code was different.
Sometimes the babies in this situation look totally normal, but other times they exhibit really strange features, like a stomach that's half white and half black, or they are born with a cervix AND a teste. There are no pictures that I can find online--but I suggest that you watch the documentary. It's on YouTube. Here's part 1:
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