After years of trying to have a child, a U.K. couple got a little more than what they initially expected after giving birth to twins that were conceived three weeks apart.
Rebecca Roberts, 38, told CBS News that she and her husband had been trying to have a child for so long that the two went to a fertility clinic in Bath, England. There, Roberts says she took a drug to help her with ovulation.
The treatment worked, but it worked a little too well.
As Roberts explains, doctors had delivered the news that she was pregnant in February 2020. Just a couple of weeks later, a scan revealed a second child that wasn't there the first time.
"I was so shocked, I didn't feel real at all. It was a good job I was laying on the couch or I would have fainted on the floor," Roberts wrote in an email to CBS News. "I felt really lucky, but so, so shocked at the same time."
Roberts learned that her pregnancy was a superfetation pregnancy, a rare instance when a second pregnancy happens during an initial one. In order for this to happen, eggs must be released from the ovary on two separate occasions before being fertilized and implanted into the uterus.
The phenomenon meant Roberts' children would be born "super twins." At the time, she learned her youngest child may not survive the pregnancy.
At 33 weeks, doctors induced labor, and Roberts' son Noah was born at 4 lbs 10 oz. Rosalie was born just two minutes later at 2lbs 7 oz.
Both infants had to be sent to the neonatal intensive care unit. However, Rosalie had a smaller placenta and was forced to stay in the hospital longer.
The family is all together now and Roberts hopes sharing her story shows other people that "anything's possible."
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