News

Singing the life of an inspirational woman

4 March 2008: World-renowned paediatrician and expert in the field of twins and multiple births, Dr Elizabeth Bryan, has died at the age of 65. Read her story on the Hereford Times website.

Village sees double with twins boom

1 March 2008: Villagers are crediting "something in the water" for an incredible increase in the number of twins enrolling at the local school. Check the Suffolk & Essex online website for the full story.

Two sets of twins keep Wests on run

29 February 2008: Two years ago, the terms multiple, duplicate, double or dual were not a part of Monte and Heather West’s vocabulary. Today those words come to them two-fold. Now the couple has two sets of twins, bringing the family’s children count to three boys and one girl. Read their story on the Ellsworth County website.

Eyeworks TV request

19 February 2008: Eyeworks TV is currently on a nation-wide search for identical twins aged under 10, and in the 10-20 year, 20-30, 30-40 and over 40 years age group for a "docusoap", which would follow their lives and loves etc. The twins need to be New Zealand based and from every walk of life.

If you are interested, please contact Carolyn.taylor@eyeworks.tv or phone 021 300 924.


Separated U.K. twins marry, forced to break up

11 January 2008: Twins who were separated at birth and raised by different families met later and married, unaware that they were brother and sister. A High Court judge annulled the marriage after the couple, neither of whom even knew they had a twin, discovered their true identities and learned they were siblings. Read their story on the National Post website.


Catholic Church warns of IVF's insidious medical defects

December 16: The Catholic Church has often warned of the moral perils associated with in vitro fertilization. In addition, the processes involved in IVF bring with them a series of medical dangers, both for women and their offspring. Read the fully story on Zenit.


Twins and then Quads

December 13: Imagine having 3 year old twins, and then finding out you were expecting quads! Meet the Hand family of Ohio who after six years of fruitless attempts at conceiving a child, ended up with 3 more girls and a boy. Read their story here on Toledo Blade.


The Miracle Of Multiple Births

December 12, 2007: Carrying more than one fetus to full term is termed as multiple births. There could be many reasons like hereditary, race, previous history of pregnancy with multiple births, infertility treatments which may be responsible for multiple births. Read the full story on the American Chronicle website.


Clinics urged to reduce IVF multiple births

Clinics offering IVF treatment are to be asked to examine how they can bring down the number of multiple births in a move which could end the boom in IVF twins and triplets. Visit this UK News site for more information.


Indian Girl Born With Four Arms And Four Legs Has Successful Surgery

November 13, 2007: Read the remarkable story of the little girl was born joined at the the pelvis to a "parasitic twin" that stopped developing in her mother's womb. She absorbed the limbs, kidneys and other body parts of the undeveloped twin. This ABC News website has the details.


Identical twin girls different since birth

November 11, 2007: What happens when twins are born on two separate days? Read this family's story in the Akron Beacon Journal.


Multiple births present multiple challenges

November 9, 2007: Life might seem hectic enough when you are expecting your first baby, but what if you found out there were more than one? How about three? Or four? Read this couple's story in the Post-Bulletin.


Nigeria's 'land of twins' baffles fertility experts

Does eating yams increase your fertility? Some in Nigeria's Yoruba community believe so, where almost 5 percent of all Yoruba births produce twins, and where twins are treated with affection, love and respect. Their birth is a good omen for the family. Read this remarkable story.


Drugs boost rate of triplets

Triplets were rare in the days before fertility drugs — one set in every 8,100 live births — but they have become increasingly common over the past two decades. These days a set of triplets may occur as frequently as every 700 births.

Statistics collected by the federal Centers for Disease Control in the USA indicate that in 2000 there were 118,916 sets of twins born, 6,742 sets of triplets, 506 quadruplets and 77 quintuplets.

Nearly all the births of quadruplets and quints can be attributed to fertility drugs.


3 + 3 = 1 huge handful

October 31, 2007: Read the story of a couple in the United States who had triplet girls when their 3 boys under 5. They thought they might have just one girl in the Mail Tribune.


Two Moorpark families with naturally conceived triplets beat stratospheric odds

November 5, 2007: What are the odds of having spontaneous identical triplets without the use of fertility drugs? How about the odds of two sets of identical triplets born within five years of each other? Even more compelling — the odds of two such families unknowingly living in the same city? And delivering their babies at the same hospital? Read their story on this Lifestyle page.


Identical Quads born in Canada

18 August 2007: Canadian woman gives birth to identical quadruplet girls, and already has 2 year old identical triplet boys. Doctors said the chances of naturally conceived quadruplets are about one in 13 million. Read their story on the Edmonton Journal and Edmonton Sun websites.


Identical Triplet Girls born

9 August 2007: A 25 year old British woman recently gave birth in Austria to a set of healthy identical triplets – an event that happens only in about one in 150,000 pregnancies. The 3 girls were delivered prematurely at 32 weeks, and are expected to survive. Read the full story on Times Online.


Surge in Multiple Births

8 August 2007: The National Center for Health Statistics reports that 136,328 — or about 3 percent of the babies born in the United States in 2002 — were multiples. Of those, 128,665 were twins, 7,110 triplets, 468 quintuplets and 85 higher-order births. kindergarten in Carlisle, Mass., this fall, 15 of the 70 children at a kindergarten in Carlisle, Mass., (20 percent of the entire class) is either a twin or a triplet. Find out more on this ABC News article.


Hospital delivers 4 sets of twin boys in one day

26 June: Hospital staff were flat out recently when four sets of twin boys were born on the same day. Read their story on the Daily Bulletin website.


5 sets of twins in one class

19 June 2007: Imagine calling the roll in a class where there are five sets of twins. Read this story from the UK's Daily Mail.


Conjoined twins separated

19 June 2007: Seven month old conjoined twins fused at the lower back were separated in Salt Lake City. Read their story on the TwinCities website.


Blame it on hormones

19 June 2007: Researchers believe that exposure to tetestorone in the womb may result in women with twin brothers being less likely to marry and have fewer babies. This article was in the Daily Mail.


Fetal Reduction

17 June 2007: This article discusses the dilemma parents have when choosing fetal reduction, and gives some stories from the parents perspective, on the Twin Cities website.


New statistics about NZ multiple births

12 May 2007: In 2006, a total of 1,720 children were multiple births, compared with 1,040 in 1976. Twins were born to 440 first-time mothers and another five new mothers had triplets. Read the full story on the TVNZ website.


US Census figures released

13 May 2007: The odds of a woman having twins today are 1 in 31, according to the U.S. Census. In 1980, those odds were 1 in 89. View more statistics on the SouthCoastToday website.


Separated twins celebrate 5th birthday

23 April 2007: Two Filipino boys, born joined at the top of their heads, celebrated their 5th birthday recently, 2 and a half years after being separated. Read the full story on the Global Nation website.


Test Tube Twins Turn 21

23 April 2007: Read this fascinating story about South African test tube twins who turned 21 recently on the IOL website


Folic Acid doubles twin chance

6 March 2007: It is possible that women who take extra folic acid to reduce the risk of spinal defects in their unborn babies, are more likely to have twins, the results of a study has concluded. There are moves to fortify bread with folic acid to prevent birth defects, but this could increase the number of twins born in New Zealand. Read the full story on the BBC News website.


Surgery saves unborn Twins

6 March 2007: Successful surgery saves unborn twins diagnosed with twin-to-twin syndrome and paves the way to save more in the future. Read this remarkable story on the Herald Sun website.


Desperate Housewives star has twin girls

21 February 2007: Marcia Cross, the 44 year old actress from Desperate Housewives, gave birth to fraternal twin girls Eden and Savannah in Los Angeles. During the final few weeks of her pregnancy, production of her Desperate Housewives scenes were moved to her Los Angeles home as she was put on bed rest. Read the late April edition of Women's Day for the full story and photos.


Psychic Twins

Terry and Linda Jamison, known internationally as, "The Psychic Twins", are the only twin psychics in the world. These celebrity psychics have appeared extensively on over fifty TV and radio shows. Read all about them on Twin Connections.


Celebrity Star's Wife has Twins

1 February 2007: Do you watch Grey's Anatomy? You'll recognise Patrick Dempsey, known as Dr Derek Shepherd in the hit TV show. His wife Jill recently gave birth to twin boys. Check out the story on ABC News.


Twins Give Birth to Sons Within Hours

25 January 2007: Twin Sisters give birth to a son within hours of each other on the same day. Read the full story on AOL News.


3 Babies, 2 Wombs, 1 Mother

22 December 2006: A woman with two wombs has given birth to three children in what is believed to the first case of its kind ever recorded.

The girls — two identical twins delivered from one womb and a third, fraternal twin — were born seven weeks early by Caesarean to a 23 year old woman in Bristol in the UK.

The babies had spent nine weeks in hospital before being allowed to go home with their happy parents. Read the full story on the CBS News website and the Daily Mail.


Black and White Twins

21 October 2006: Beautiful baby twins Alicia and Jasmin Singerl certainly make people look twice. Alicia has dark brown eyes and complexion, while Jasmin is blue-eyed and fair-skinned. Experts say the chance of twins being born with such different physical characteristics is about a million to one. Read the full story on this News site.


Tall women have twins

29 September 2006: Taller women are more likely to have twins, according to a U.S. study. Read the full story on the Medline Plus website.


Twins IQ is high

The academic performance of twins is just as good as that of single-born children, according to a new study published online in the British Medical Journal. Find out more on the MedlinePlus website.


Polish Twins President and Prime Minister

14 July 2006: Polish President Lech Kaczynski has sworn in his identical twin brother, Jaroslaw, as prime minister. The development makes the Kaczynski brothers the world's only twins to hold the two highest posts in any country. Read the full news story on the BBC News page.


Conjoined twins separated

14 June 2006: Conjoined baby sisters from California, fused from breast to pelvis, successfully separated. Read full story in the New York Times and and the Childrens Hospital Los Angeles website.


Two sets of triplets two years apart

An American couple celebrated the birth of their second set of triplets: Eric, Evan and Elyssa. The newborns join siblings Dylan, David and Danielle — born March 2004. Are they going for the hat trick? Read what the husband said in the full story on the Home News Tribune.


Hormone linked to twins

Older women are more likely to conceive twins because of rising concentrations of a naturally occurring hormone over-stimulating their ovaries, causing a simultaneous double ovulation. Read the full Reuters story released on 22 February 2006.


Twins and Alzheimers

The largest study to date of twins and Alzheimer's disease indicates that inheritance may play a role in nearly 80 percent of cases. Read the story of some ground-breaking research involving twins on the Reuters e-Health website released on 7 February 2006.


'Triplets' - but born years apart

A 48 year old mother is expecting her third "triplet" after giving birth to the first more than 10 years ago. The Australian woman is due to give birth in May 2006 to a baby boy, who will join in-vitro fertilisation siblings Bridgett, 10 and Demi 7.

The latest addition is the last of 26 embryos frozen when Debra Van Every was 37. The conception of three siblings from the same egg batch in more than a deade was extraordinary, since he had had her tubes tied when she was 28 after already having four children. But when her first husband died from cancer and she later remarried Wayne, they decided their family was not complete, and arranged for the IVF treatment. [DomPost, 17 January 2006]


Twins compete in Winter Olympics

21 year old Utah twins Brett and Eric Camerota compete in the Nordic Combined Event, a hybrid sport that combines both ski jumping and cross country skiing. They are very competitive and enjoy doing things together. Read their story ...


Twins in the Animal Kingdom

Read about a rare set of Day Gecko born recently at Wellington Zoo and Zoo Atlanta announced the rare birth of twin western lowland gorillas in 2005.


World's largest gathering of Twins

If you happen to be in Twinsburg, Ohio in August, pop down to the Twins Days where over 2000 sets of twins gather to celebrate their twinship with activities and guest speakers.


Twin Sisters deliver Twin Boys hours apart on same day

Two twin sisters are seeing double after delivering two sets of twin boys about an hour apart in 2004. Read their story ...


Identical Triplet Boys born on Friday 13th

Read about these triplets whose mother did not take fertility drugs and all three babies shared the same placenta.