How does it feel to discover, almost at the age of 20, that you have had a twin brother your entire life? Furthermore, you are very familiar with him! Everything appears to be clear with the twins: these are two or more children whose parents conceived at the same time, the mother carried under her heart together, and the mother gave birth with a difference — at most a few hours.
They usually share a birthday and are so similar that even parents get confused about who is who. However, one girl told her story on Tik-Tok. She discovered she had a twin brother when she was 19, just like in an Indian melodrama. And it was her younger brother, who was six years her junior. She discovered the secret while eating dinner with her parents, who had been divorced for several years.
They mentioned it casually, as if it had no significance. But Anna was taken aback. Her brother and she were conceived at the same time but were born six years apart. What makes this possible?The key is modern technology. Anna’s mother was unable to conceive “the old-fashioned way” and turned to IVF. In the laboratory, the mother’s egg is fertilized with the father’s sperm, and if the procedure is successful, the embryo is implanted in the mother’s uterus.
The procedure was a huge success, and Anna’s mother even received two embryos. She weighed her options and determined that she was not prepared to bear and raise two children at this time, so the second embryo was frozen until a better time came. Anna was born, and her mother decided she wanted a second child five years later. She returned to the clinic and was given the same embryo that Anna had conceived.
Her younger brother was born eventually — the girl was six years old at the time. Nobody told her how a child, who resembled her older sister like two drops of water, was conceived. Everything came together after 7 years, entirely by chance. Not everyone agreed that Anna had the right to refer to the boy as her twin brother because twins should be conceived and born at the same time.
However, new technologies are altering our perception of reality: if Anna and her brother were discovered to be two eggs fertilized at the same time, how do they differ from ordinary fraternal twins? Some thanked the girl for telling the truth: something similar happened to them, and they didn’t know what to do. The world is changing at an alarming rate, and we are struggling to keep up.