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THE TWINS: THE ENIGMA GROWS

My newborn twin granddaughters, Mitsuki (Full Moon) and Miasa (Beautiful Hemp), have now grown into their own faces, and it has become pretty clear to me that they are not, in fact, identical.

I suspected as much earlier, based on the shapes of their ears and other factors, but since they had just been born and were as yet not really formed, I agreed with the identical school, since Mitsuki and Miasa were of the same sex and there had been only one placenta, with two umbilical cords.

Miki-san, the well-experienced midwife, who because of other slight differences in the twins had also initially suspected that they might be fraternal (from two original eggs, with two distinct placentas) had carefully examined the placenta and declared the twins to be identical (from one egg divided into two eggs, nourished from one placenta via two umbilical cords). I accepted her judgement, backed up by this quote from another professional source I found later:

"But fraternal twins are two babies from two ovulations and two fertilizations -- there must be two sacs and two placentas. So in summary, a set of identical twins may present with only one sac, or with doubling of everything; fraternal twins must have a doubling of everything."

This was further affirmed by a medical discovery I noted in the news some days later, in which it was announced that for the first time in medical history, fraternal twins had been born with a single placenta, which the researchers surmised must have originally been two placentas that had merged into one. They attributed this to its having been an in vitro fertilization, since this phenomenon had never been seen in natural fraternal twins.

But Mitsuki and Miasa had been born naturally. If they are fraternal, then theirs would be the first known natural single-placenta birth of fraternal twins in medical history. Not bad for a couple of cuties not yet two months old. My scientific inquiry continues...