In the beginning, Baby Noah was alone in his mother’s womb growing wonderfully.
The first ultrasound taken of Baby Noah was at seven and ten weeks into the pregnancy. The parents, Rebecca Roberts, 39, and Rhys Weaver, 43, says they been trying to conceive Baby Noah for over a year.
Then suddenly, after three months of being pregnant, Baby Noah remarkably gained company.
The 12th week sonogram showed that Baby Noah had unexpectedly gained a little sister – a fraternal twin the parents named Rosalie.
“I got pregnant whilst I was already pregnant, which was absolutely crazy …because that’s not supposed to happen,” Rebecca said.
Getting pregnant while already carrying a child is a very rare thing according to one study in 2009 that found fewer than 10 recorded cases in the world. It is said to be called a superfetation.
The parents were informed by doctors that the second baby had been conceived three weeks apart from Baby Noah.
“They realized that the baby was growing at a consistent rate of three weeks behind the first one, and it was then that they said to me, they think this is a superfetation pregnancy,” she said.
“I couldn’t believe it had happened to me,” Rebecca said with a laugh/ “But it did – it’s lovely. It’s like winning the lottery.”
Rhys felt the same way. “I was elated to be having one child, but even more so for twins. The job is done in one go! And then Rebecca did some research, and we realized how unique and how lucky we were.”
“Superfetation’s are rare for a variety of reasons,’ said Atlanta gynecologist Dr. Lillian Schapiro.
Initially, women normally ovulate only one time per cycle, letting out one or more eggs at the same time. If the man’s sperm is fertilized successfully, the egg or eggs will then attach to the uterus, and then the pregnancy starts, and no further ovulation continues.
“If a woman has twins,” Schapiro says, “two eggs are released simultaneously, and in the unusual case of triplets, those eggs are all released after one ovulation.” In the case of identical twins, that happens after a freshly fertilized egg splits in half.
However, in Rebecca’s case, her egg was fertilized and then implanted during her initial ovulation, and then “somehow she ovulated again during the same cycle,” Schapiro explained further. “Another egg had also been fertilized and became another embryo, and at two different instances both embryos implanted in the uterus.
One reason why superfetation’s are so exceptional, is that once the pregnancy starts, the uterus is not a hospital place for further implantation, says Shapiro. This means the second embryo “must have managed to implant and grow at a stage when we could not have thought it would be able to grow.”
“We have almost never seen where two embryos start developing at different times, Schapiro said. “This is just nothing short of amazing.”
Rebecca had just taken a dose of fertility drugs made to stimulate ovulation right before she conceived Noah. While that could be the explanation for this rare event, the mother says it could also just be a “medical marvel.”
The parents started to worry early on scared that Rosalie’s development in the womb would be too far behind Baby Noah would affect her health during birth.
“It could go either way,” Rebecca expressed. “Because the baby is so much smaller, there could be something wrong with it and might not survive. It was a relief. It was a great relief,” she said.
Rebecca delivered the babies by C-Section in September of 2020. However, both babies had to be kept in the NICU separately. Rosalie was born at 2 pound, 7 ounces. She was sent to the specialty NICU just 15 minutes away from the NICU that Baby Noah was being cared for, who was born at 4 pounds, 10 ounces.
“She was a tiny, tiny little baby just fitting in our hands. Even though he was tiny, you could see that he was a much bigger baby,” Rebecca explained.
“It was very hard. I had a major operation and then our babies were in two separate hospitals as well,” she said. “So, it was really hard work having to travel between both of them.”
Baby Noah arrived home in as little as three weeks. Rosalie had to remain in the NICU for a long 95 days, coming home just in time as a present for Christmas.
7 months later, Noah still appears to be ahead of Rosalie, the father says, “She’s a little trooper. She’s got her own little personality but have no real worries at all.”
Baby Noah has learned to roll over and is “showing signs of trying to crawl, so he might be off soon, which will be exciting,” Rebecca added.
“They’re both talking, which is really really sweet, because they talk to each other. It’s lovely. They interact with each other really, really well. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.”
