BRAZILIAN WOMAN HAS TWINS WITH TWO DIFFERENT DADS
A 19-year-old woman in Mineiros, in southwestern Goiás, Brazil, gave birth to twins with different fathers after having sex with two men on the same day. DNA tests showed each boy belonged to a different man, a rare event her doctor called “one in a million.”
The case became public on September 6, 2022, when G1 reported it. The New York Post and other outlets followed soon after. The mother asked not to be named.
How the DNA test gave it away
The boys were about eight months old when she asked for a paternity test with the man she assumed was their dad. It came back positive for only one of them.
She repeated the tests, and the result held: one boy matched, the other did not. “I remembered that I had had sex with another man and asked him to take the test, which was positive,” she told G1.
She described the moment to Spanish TV channel Antena 3, according to the Mirror. “We did the DNA tests and discovered that the father who was present at the test was only the father of one of the children. That night, I had sex with two different men and became pregnant by both of them,” she said.
She said she had no idea any of this was possible. “I was surprised by the results. I didn’t know this could happen. They look very similar,” she told G1. She told the Mirror she “never imagined this could happen.”
What the doctor said
The condition is called heteropaternal superfecundation. Dr. Túlio Jorge Franco, who followed her pregnancy, explained that it can happen when two eggs from the same mother are fertilized by different men.
“The babies share their mother’s genetic material, but they grow in separate placentas,” he told G1.
Franco said the case was extremely rare and that he had never expected to see one in his lifetime. “It happens one in a million,” he said. By his count, it was the 20th such case recorded worldwide.
The pregnancy itself was uneventful. “The pregnancy was very calm, with no complications. The boys were born healthy and never had health problems,” Franco said. The mother received her prenatal care from medical students at the school where he teaches.
Correio Braziliense reported that prenatal exams did pick up a small difference in size between the twins, though it was not considered significant.
Life with two dads in the picture
The boys were one year and four months old when G1 published its story. The mother said the father of one of them took on both boys and registered them at the civil registry.
“He takes care of both, helps me a lot in raising them and gives them all the support they need,” she said. Metro likewise reported that one of the men is listed as the children’s father and has supported her. The New York Post reported that one father cared for the twins and that it was unclear whether the other was involved.
Franco disclosed the case the same week G1 ran its report. He and his students kept studying it because of how unusual it was.
One student was put in charge of writing a scientific article about the twins. According to G1, it could be published in Brazilian journals and even international ones.
