Getting pregnant when you are already pregnant is a rare situation, but it is possible to happen. This situation is known as superfetation and is characterized by the pregnancy of twins, but not exactly at the same time, with a few days difference in conception. This generally happens in women who are undergoing some treatment to get pregnant, such as the use of ovulation inducers, which ends up delaying the interruption of ovulation.
In a common pregnancy after conception, the woman’s body prevents ovulation from happening again and therefore another egg cannot be fertilized. However, there may be some hormonal change that means that even if she has been pregnant for a few days, the woman may ovulate again, running the risk of being fertilized if she has unprotected sex, thus becoming pregnant with twins, when in reality I should only be expecting 1 baby.
How can it happen
Pregnancy with twins at different ages can happen because the sperm remains alive inside the uterus for about 3 days. Assuming that the woman was ovulating and there was intimate contact, if 1 sperm manages to enter the egg, there will be conception and this indicates that she is pregnant with only 1 baby.
If for some reason, even after this conception, the woman presents another mature egg, if this is fertilized 2 or 3 days later by another sperm that may or may not have come from the same sexual intercourse, she will then become pregnant with the 2nd baby. In this case, she will be pregnant with twins and they will be false twins, or twins, because each one will have its own placenta.
How to tell if twins are different ages
The only way to know that twins have different weeks of life is through an ultrasound, which indicates that one baby has less development than the other. However, the fact that a woman is pregnant with twins at different stages of development does not always mean that there has been superfetation.
Initially, the woman will not notice any difference and will discover that she is pregnant at the normal time, when she presents symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, tender breasts or delayed menstruation. The doctor may suspect that it is a twin pregnancy when he finds that the Beta HCG levels are very high and confirms that it is a twin pregnancy by performing an ultrasound. And this is when superfetation can be discovered. See what normal beta HCG levels are.
Superfetation is a very rare condition and usually occurs in women who have become pregnant due to hormone treatment.
How is the birth
The most common thing is that the difference in the days of conception for each baby is very small and therefore, it should not influence the time of birth. In any case, if the difference is large, with more than 4 weeks of difference between one baby and another, when the youngest is ready to be born, the birth must take place, but this depends on several factors, because the older baby cannot spend more than 41 weeks in the womb.
Twins are usually born via cesarean section and need to stay in the hospital for a few days until they weigh more than 2 kg and are healthy enough to be discharged, which does not always happen at the same time.
