Identical or Fraternal???

While I was pregnant, the gyno said our girls are fraternal as they were in seperate sacs. After the C-sect the nurse said that they shared 1 umbulical cord so they are identical????

So what are your opinions?

As far as I know as long as they are in separate sacks they are not identical.

Tracey there is no physical way that they could have shared a cord, they may have shared a placenta, or their 2 separate placentas may have fused looking like one. it is actually very difficult to tell sometimes. Even identical twins may be in different sacs depending on how early they split from each other, although they are usually in the same sac, which is very easy to see on ultrasound. The only diffinitive way to know is by doing DNA testing. Did you know that the Olsen twins are actually fraternal?? mine are fraternal as they resulted from 2 embryos out of 3 we put back, plus they look entirely different, but fraternal twins can look very much alike.

Interesting!!! Thanks Paulae

HI Tracey

Mine is identical - shared the same placenta with two cords. Our sac was much bigger than the normal sac that one baby is in and we saw that from the first scan on 6 weeks. From that time my babies stayed on the same sides meaning Montiné was left and Montinique was right. THey could only turn up and down and roll from back to tummy but couldn't switch to side to side (hope you know what I mean)

But now I must say and I don't know if it is because I know the difference between them but their bodies - ears, noses, mouth, eyes every toe and finger is exactly the same but the one has more hair that the other one, phisically the one is stronger than the other one and the shape of their faces differ a bit - so yes identicals can differ in things.

Apparently, identical twins become less identical as they get older becuase as everyone else, their DNA changes a little bit over time, so they end up less alike! Very interesting - we had a lecture about it once.

Thanks Ladies

Wow, that is very interesting Paula, as you might know my sisters is twins and although they don't look the same to me a lot of people over the years told us they look identical, but we don't know for sure and my parents didn't want to do any testing to found out.

This is very interesting because like I said we could clearly see it is one sac and their was no "devider" between them and the reason for the close monitoring frm 28 weeks because the risk of twin to twin tranfer were very high!

But in the end we must be grateful that we are blessed with twins, identical of fraternal1

I agree 100% Marthie, we are truly blessed - 2 healthy babies at 1 time!! It still amazes me.

I'm very sure ours are Fraternal tho - the gynie knows what he's talking about and doing, the nurse just made us a bit confused.