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mommy2boys
10-23-2009, 05:23 PM
I am pregnant with baby #3 and I am, as always, curious about the potential of twins. I know that fraternal twins are only inherited from the mother's side, and that identicals are most likely random.

But with my husband's family, this seems to defy the odds. There are currently 4 sets of living twins. Here's who is a twin:

1) My husband's paternal grandfather and great uncle are fraternal twins
2) Husband's great uncle (who is a twin) had a son, who had fraternal twin girls
3) Husband's cousin has fraternal twin boys, but the dad is blood related and the mom married into the family.
4) Husband's brother was a fraternal twin, but one of the babies died in utero.
5) There are many more sets of twins in the family history, but the ones I mentioned are all living twins.

How do you explain this if fraternal twins are not inherited on the father's side??? Most of the twins in his family are from the father's side. I am just confused about HOW you explain this! It always makes me wonder if my husband and I will have twins? This is our last pregnancy so I suppose we'll know soon enough!!
Babyblue
10-25-2009, 02:39 PM
They have no proof of what all goes into the making of twins other then knowing that the female can have the chance of dropping more then one egg and there is some research that says eating a very large amount of particular foods can cause more then one egg to drop at a time.

I do believe there is something genetic that can cause identical twins. There are several sets of identical twins in my family, always girls. Never any twin boys or fraternal twins. My mother researched and found 12 sets of girls recorded. But my grandmother thinks its probably closer to 20, because back a few generations ago twins didn’t often survive and were not recorded as living children.

Also I have wondered if there is something environmental that can cause both identical and fraternal twins. In my senior class of under 200 students there was 6 sets of identical twins and 1 set of fraternal, again all girls.