The woman gave birth to twin boys, but not in the usual way. One of them is ten years older than the other, and this is not a fantasy – science assisted mom in delaying the birth of her youngest child. And now the older brother can see how his little clone develops. For several years, a woman named Wang from China’s Hubei Province tried unsuccessfully to conceive a child.

She had several miscarriages, and after another examination, doctors discovered that the Chinese woman had fallopian tube blockage, and IVF could be the only way out of this situation. Despite the fact that test-tube babies were uncommon even in progressive China at the time, Wang agreed to the procedure in 2009. Several embryos were artificially raised from the spouses’ sperm and eggs, and one of them was implanted in a woman in October.

Doctors monitored the mother throughout her pregnancy and gave her a favorable prognosis. This was also evident from the baby’s ultrasound (he did not look like a stranger, as sometimes happens). Lu Lu, a perfectly healthy boy weighing 3.48 kilograms, was born by caesarean section in June 2010. The parents’ happiness knew no bounds. Lu Lu grew up healthy and strong, and when he was old enough, he begged his parents for a younger brother or sister.

The parents were unconcerned and returned to the same clinic, which had frozen several “spare” embryos in 2009 just in case. The doctors warned the woman that repeated IVF could be dangerous at her age of 41, but she decided to take a chance. The most viable of the thawed embryos was genetically identical to the one from which Lu Lu was born, allowing the baby to have not just a brother, but a twin brother.

This surprised parents, though not as much as the American father, who invented a new emotion when he received three children at once instead of one. The defrosted Wang embryo was implanted in October 2019, and a boy was born on June 16, 2020, also via caesarean section, who looked exactly like his older brother and weighed the same – 3.48 kilograms. The parents named their youngest son Tong Tong, which means “The Same” in Chinese.