A 19-year-old Brazilian woman had a miraculous and wildly rare medical event happen to her when she gave birth to her twins.
Or are they twins? After all, they do not have the same father.
The woman from Minerios in Goias, Brazil, said that she had sex with two men on the same day and each of them is the father of a different baby.
Although there was no doubt at first about the babies' lineage, the mother, a little before the twins' first birthday, began to doubt the identity of their biological father.
She then allegedly took a DNA sample from the man she believed to be the father, only to find that he only matches one of the two twins.
She remembered that she had sex with another man that same day and tested his DNA, as well, and as she had suspected, he was the father of the other baby.
"I remembered that I had had sex with another man and called him to take the test, which was positive," local Brazilian media reported the mother as saying. "I was surprised by the results. I didn’t know this could happen and the babies are very similar."
How can she give birth to babies from two different fathers?
This rare phenomenon is called heteropaternal superfecundation.
This refers to situations in which the twins are half-siblings, each sharing the same mother but not the father. While this is quite common in cats and dogs, it's quite rare in humans, with only a small handful of cases having been recorded.
Where are they now?
The birthing process, although it sounds complicated, went by smoothly, and everyone came out healthy.
Today, the babies are a little over a year old. The mother told local media that one of the two fathers helps her regularly with childcare.