March 28, 2011 • 12 mins
Researchers believe that one in eight pregnancies involve twin fetuses -- so why do only one in eighty pregnancies actually result in the birth of twins? In this episode, Molly and Cristen explore the rare phenomenon known as fetus in fetu.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom? Never told you?
From house Stop works dot Com? Only one Welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Molly. Molly. I have
(00:22):
twin nephews. That's so cute. They're adorable. They are fun
twice the fun. And they are not only twins, but
they are also twin redheads, and they're just They're just delightful.
And the older they get, it's interesting to see how
their their personalities are developing and their identities are really
coming out. But it reminds me when I when I
(00:43):
hang out with them, how much I wanted a twin,
did you? And when I was a kid, I mean,
because you know, who wouldn't want another Christen around? Um?
I was a very egotistical child. But then as I
got older into adolescents and teen years, that feeling did
diminish a lot because I realized that if I had
(01:03):
a twin sister, i'd probably hate her, at least for
a while. You know, I never had the desire for
a twin, but I did have a friend Um, and
we were convinced we looked exactly alike, despite the fact
that when you look at pictures now we look nothing alike.
And I do remember one time we dressed up. We
switched clothes and tried to pull like a parent trap,
(01:24):
like I tried to go home with her parents and
she tried to have dinner with mine, and like they
humored us. But that was Kids are so crazy. Why
do they think things like that will work? They don't.
They'll switch arou Uh. Yeah, when my best friend actually
has a twin brother, now that I could handle twin
brother totally old twin brothers sidekick. Yeah, you could fight crime.
(01:48):
We could fight crime. They're even more twin crime fighters.
Good idea because you could pull all these you know
gags where bad cop has all of a sudden good
cop because they look exactly the same. But my when
I mentioned to you earlier that I really wanted a
twin when I was a kid, you told me that
it's probably because there was one growing inside of me
(02:11):
at some point and it vanished. And I am subconsciously
feeling the loss of that twin. And I mean, I
know you're not off your rocker, so maybe you should
maybe you should pick it up and let folks know
what on earth you're talking about. That's true. Our topic
today is am I carrying my own twin? And um.
The fact of the matter is is that researchers believe
(02:32):
that one in eight pregnancies involves twin fetuses. However, the
birth rate is nowhere near one in eight pregnancies for twins.
It's more like one in eighty pregnancies results in the
birth of twins. So sometimes somehow between that one and
eight twin conception rate and the one and eighty birth
rate of twins, these twins go somewhere. Sometimes they just
(02:53):
dive early in the pregnancy and to become reabsorbed by
the mother's body. But there's this very rare phenomenon that
we want to talk about just because it's so bizarre,
in which, uh, a fetus envelops its twin in the
womb and comes to life carrying its own brother or sister. Yes,
(03:13):
this is called fetus in fetu and it happens very
early within a pregnancy. And what happens is, instead of separating,
one fetus becomes trapped inside the other, and then the
trapped fetus begins acting like a parasite on its host
tapping into the twins blood supply to stay alive. And
(03:36):
if the fetus grows, which yes, the fetus can grow,
it will cause great pain for its carrier, and no
surprise because you are carrying your own twin, and usually
you'll carry it in your abdomen much like a regular panthesis.
Sometimes these babies that are born with a fetus inside,
having extended um, swollen abdomens. Sometimes it can it can
(03:58):
manifest itself other places this but that seems to be
the most common thing, and they usually find it when
the infant host is an infant before eighteen months um.
Though some of the freakiest cases, the ones that make
the news. Uh there. You know, they might be in
their thirties or fourties and they've had this mass all
their life and uh, finally they have the surgery and
(04:19):
you know, they find the remains. I mean, it's not
a four leaf, it's not a fully formed fetus. Even
though it does continue to grow, it doesn't grow into
its own little person. It might just have um, malformed
limbs or hair, maybe teeth um, maybe a vertebal column.
But you know, it's it's not a little person. It's
just sells now I'm gonna get a little graphic here
(04:39):
and share the story of the thirties six year old
man who had a case of fetus and futu and
he had, yes, a huge distended belly and they thought
that it was a tumor or something. In in one day,
this guy was in India. In one day, the pain
being became so great in his stomach, he went to
the emergency room. Doctors operate on him, thinking they're gonna
(05:03):
uncover tumor. No, we find a malformed fetus with limbs,
genitalia and hair. And one of the doctors who was
in the operating room when this was happening told ABC
News that quote. He just put his hand inside and
he said, there are a lot of bones inside. First
one limb came out, then another limb came out in
(05:24):
some part of genitalia, in some part of hair, some limbs, jaw,
and more hair. And get this, this was the part
that kind of creep me out the most, as if
that other part hadn't I know, get ready for those people,
it's fingernails were quite long. I think the doctor said
(05:44):
something like I could have I could have shook that
fetus's hand or something like that. Yeah, so we really
should have done. This is the Halloween the spookiest stuff
we've always talked about. It can be kind of kind
of gross, and if you're if you're pregnant, I apologize
because this would give me nightmares. I know. But bear
minded is very very rare if there are fewer than
a hundred examples documented in medical literature, and doctors estimate
(06:07):
this happens one in every five hundred thousand berths, so
you're probably safe, you know. Yeah, that's that's really good odds. Interestingly,
this does happen in equal rates to males and females.
You know, that person in India that that Christmas talking
about was male and he had absorbed a fetus. Um,
let's see what else can I tell you? When when
the fetus is removed, they might be between one point
(06:30):
five to nine point five inches in length. They might
weigh just like one point two grams or four pounds.
They're very small, and you know it's it's not a
fully formed person by any stretch of the imagination. They're
usually missing major parts of the brain and the skull,
and once you remove the mass, the host twin is
usually fine. Yes, but What is more common than fetis
(06:53):
in fee to is something called a tara toma, which
is a type of tumor that can also look like
a malform fetus, but it's just a group of cells
that can get this developed skin and teeth creeping. Yes,
so he just in feet toos tara tomas and vanishing
twins and finishing twins. Yes, Milly, we have one fantastic
(07:15):
vanishing twin anecdote to share before we wrap up this podcast.
Right about certain cyclists that use the vanishing twin defense.
Right in two thousand five, this American cyclist named Tyler
Hamilton's he was accused of blood doping, which is this
process by which you can boost performance by inserting another
person's blood. And they caught him, and as a defense
(07:37):
he said, oh, you know, I think that there's another
twin in the womb with me and I absorbed his
blood and uh, that's that's that. And they didn't buy
that defense. But if you do, and you know, they've
done research on the fact that you know, one in
eight pregnancy starts his twins, you know, is the fetus
that remains after the twin becomes reabsorbed or dies is
(08:00):
twin affected the result. I mean, there's very little research
on it, bhich so far it seems like no that
you can find a lot of support groups. In fact,
the whole reason when Kristen said that she wanted a
twin so badly, according to one support group, that is
a sign that you might have had a twin at
one point and you have suppressed the memory and you're
trying to find this person that you began life with.
(08:20):
Um So if you have a really strong desire for
a twin or some other symptoms of this according to
the website about being a womb twin survivor, or if
you're really sensitive, if you're very affected by death, if
you think about pregnancy a lot, if you express emotions
very strongly, if you always are living life to the
fullest to compensate for a loss, or if you feel
(08:41):
very tired, then it's possible you had a vanishing twin.
And I don't know about anybody, because that describes a
lot of people, but of course you know, but that's
a lot of people who you know, according to statistics,
who might have a vanishing twin. So the next time
you're feeling down, just blame it on your vanishing twin. Yeah,
next time, you know, like show up late to work
and you can be like bot, I'm sorry, my vanishing
(09:02):
twin went out last night and got super a wasted,
so he slipped in, And of course apologies. If you
do feel very sensitive about vanishing twin situations, there are
support groups out there that are very easy to find
on the internet. But I just feel like the description
of the people who might be womb twin survivors doesn't
compass an awful lot of pretty regular emotions. Now, I
(09:26):
really hope this podcast episode will provide all of our
listeners with some great cocktail party talk. That's true, especially
when your friend tells you they're pregnant. Break out some
fetus and feet two facts like there's a good chance
that one of your you know, you had two fetuses
and one's eating the other one. So you wanted to drink,
I won't. No way, you can't because you're pregnant. That's
(09:47):
like double the burn. Yeah, we're actually that's the worst
cocktail cocktail party conversation I can think of. But if
you have some cocktail talk to the dogway. Our email
is mom stuff at house atwork dot com. And right
now I have an email from that very same email
addresses from Donna, and it's about our podcasts about women
(10:10):
running colder than men, and she writes. A friend of
mine has Rainow syndrome in conjunction with lupus, and her
fingers and toes are really a deathly purplished black color
due to poor blood circulation. When she talked to her
doctor about it, she was prescribed by agra. Originally, biagra
was developed and researched for its vaso dilating properties to
treat heart health conditions like ray. Now it's hypertension and
(10:31):
heart failure. In the midst of the studies, it was
reported by patients that had improved directile dysfunction. The pharmacy
companies can make more money on a drug perrectile dysfunction
than one for the other medical conditions, despite the fact
of others actually more dangerous and thus marketed as an
a d drug. Anyway, my friend told me that the
first time she went to get her prescription filled, she
got all sorts of strange looks from the pharmacy. Several
(10:51):
people asked to clarify the prescription, questioning a woman's name
on the viagraph prescription. She said it was really embarrassing,
but it turned out it was worth the embarrassment because
once she started taking out her fingers and toes went
from nearly dead purple to a nice light blue and
on good days even pink. Uh. So, you know, just
a suggestion out there if you want to ask your
doctor about a biograph prescription that has nothing to do
(11:13):
with the rectile dysfunction. Well, I've got an email here
from the United Arab Emirates, but I don't have a
name to go with it, but this is in response
to our podcast on eyebrows, and this unnamed person writes,
I'm writing you from the U a E. In the
Arabian Gulf and I've just listened to your podcasts on eyebrows.
(11:35):
I thought you would be interested to know that here
in Arab Gulf countries, it's a definite style to have
a unibrow. Girls with unibrows are viewed as very attractive
to Arab guys and Gulf countries. The brows are still
kept very neat and shrimmed and threaded, but the hair
in the middle is left. I've even seen girls using
makeup to make a unibrow because they can't grow them.
(11:58):
And when women see other women with the of brow.
It may even be jealous of it. I just thought
you'd be interested, and I'm very interested. So thanks for
that little tidbit from the Middle East, and if you
have any tidbits to share again, Our email is mom
Stuff at how stuff works dot com. You can also
find us over on Facebook, join the conversation there and
(12:19):
tweet us at mom Stuff podcast. And finally, you can
read our blog during the week. It's stuff Mom Never
Told You at how stuff works dot com for moralness
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
dot com. To learn more about the podcast, cook on
the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage.
(12:41):
The how Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it
today on iTunes, brought to you by the reinvented two
thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom? Never told you?
From house Stop works dot Com? Only one Welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Molly. Molly. I have
(00:22):
twin nephews. That's so cute. They're adorable. They are fun
twice the fun. And they are not only twins, but
they are also twin redheads, and they're just They're just delightful.
And the older they get, it's interesting to see how
their their personalities are developing and their identities are really
coming out. But it reminds me when I when I
(00:43):
hang out with them, how much I wanted a twin,
did you? And when I was a kid, I mean,
because you know, who wouldn't want another Christen around? Um?
I was a very egotistical child. But then as I
got older into adolescents and teen years, that feeling did
diminish a lot because I realized that if I had
(01:03):
a twin sister, i'd probably hate her, at least for
a while. You know, I never had the desire for
a twin, but I did have a friend Um, and
we were convinced we looked exactly alike, despite the fact
that when you look at pictures now we look nothing alike.
And I do remember one time we dressed up. We
switched clothes and tried to pull like a parent trap,
(01:24):
like I tried to go home with her parents and
she tried to have dinner with mine, and like they
humored us. But that was Kids are so crazy. Why
do they think things like that will work? They don't.
They'll switch arou Uh. Yeah, when my best friend actually
has a twin brother, now that I could handle twin
brother totally old twin brothers sidekick. Yeah, you could fight crime.
(01:48):
We could fight crime. They're even more twin crime fighters.
Good idea because you could pull all these you know
gags where bad cop has all of a sudden good
cop because they look exactly the same. But my when
I mentioned to you earlier that I really wanted a
twin when I was a kid, you told me that
it's probably because there was one growing inside of me
(02:11):
at some point and it vanished. And I am subconsciously
feeling the loss of that twin. And I mean, I
know you're not off your rocker, so maybe you should
maybe you should pick it up and let folks know
what on earth you're talking about. That's true. Our topic
today is am I carrying my own twin? And um.
The fact of the matter is is that researchers believe
(02:32):
that one in eight pregnancies involves twin fetuses. However, the
birth rate is nowhere near one in eight pregnancies for twins.
It's more like one in eighty pregnancies results in the
birth of twins. So sometimes somehow between that one and
eight twin conception rate and the one and eighty birth
rate of twins, these twins go somewhere. Sometimes they just
(02:53):
dive early in the pregnancy and to become reabsorbed by
the mother's body. But there's this very rare phenomenon that
we want to talk about just because it's so bizarre,
in which, uh, a fetus envelops its twin in the
womb and comes to life carrying its own brother or sister. Yes,
(03:13):
this is called fetus in fetu and it happens very
early within a pregnancy. And what happens is, instead of separating,
one fetus becomes trapped inside the other, and then the
trapped fetus begins acting like a parasite on its host
tapping into the twins blood supply to stay alive. And
(03:36):
if the fetus grows, which yes, the fetus can grow,
it will cause great pain for its carrier, and no
surprise because you are carrying your own twin, and usually
you'll carry it in your abdomen much like a regular panthesis.
Sometimes these babies that are born with a fetus inside,
having extended um, swollen abdomens. Sometimes it can it can
(03:58):
manifest itself other places this but that seems to be
the most common thing, and they usually find it when
the infant host is an infant before eighteen months um.
Though some of the freakiest cases, the ones that make
the news. Uh there. You know, they might be in
their thirties or fourties and they've had this mass all
their life and uh, finally they have the surgery and
(04:19):
you know, they find the remains. I mean, it's not
a four leaf, it's not a fully formed fetus. Even
though it does continue to grow, it doesn't grow into
its own little person. It might just have um, malformed
limbs or hair, maybe teeth um, maybe a vertebal column.
But you know, it's it's not a little person. It's
just sells now I'm gonna get a little graphic here
(04:39):
and share the story of the thirties six year old
man who had a case of fetus and futu and
he had, yes, a huge distended belly and they thought
that it was a tumor or something. In in one day,
this guy was in India. In one day, the pain
being became so great in his stomach, he went to
the emergency room. Doctors operate on him, thinking they're gonna
(05:03):
uncover tumor. No, we find a malformed fetus with limbs,
genitalia and hair. And one of the doctors who was
in the operating room when this was happening told ABC
News that quote. He just put his hand inside and
he said, there are a lot of bones inside. First
one limb came out, then another limb came out in
(05:24):
some part of genitalia, in some part of hair, some limbs, jaw,
and more hair. And get this, this was the part
that kind of creep me out the most, as if
that other part hadn't I know, get ready for those people,
it's fingernails were quite long. I think the doctor said
(05:44):
something like I could have I could have shook that
fetus's hand or something like that. Yeah, so we really
should have done. This is the Halloween the spookiest stuff
we've always talked about. It can be kind of kind
of gross, and if you're if you're pregnant, I apologize
because this would give me nightmares. I know. But bear
minded is very very rare if there are fewer than
a hundred examples documented in medical literature, and doctors estimate
(06:07):
this happens one in every five hundred thousand berths, so
you're probably safe, you know. Yeah, that's that's really good odds. Interestingly,
this does happen in equal rates to males and females.
You know, that person in India that that Christmas talking
about was male and he had absorbed a fetus. Um,
let's see what else can I tell you? When when
the fetus is removed, they might be between one point
(06:30):
five to nine point five inches in length. They might
weigh just like one point two grams or four pounds.
They're very small, and you know it's it's not a
fully formed person by any stretch of the imagination. They're
usually missing major parts of the brain and the skull,
and once you remove the mass, the host twin is
usually fine. Yes, but What is more common than fetis
(06:53):
in fee to is something called a tara toma, which
is a type of tumor that can also look like
a malform fetus, but it's just a group of cells
that can get this developed skin and teeth creeping. Yes,
so he just in feet toos tara tomas and vanishing
twins and finishing twins. Yes, Milly, we have one fantastic
(07:15):
vanishing twin anecdote to share before we wrap up this podcast.
Right about certain cyclists that use the vanishing twin defense.
Right in two thousand five, this American cyclist named Tyler
Hamilton's he was accused of blood doping, which is this
process by which you can boost performance by inserting another
person's blood. And they caught him, and as a defense
(07:37):
he said, oh, you know, I think that there's another
twin in the womb with me and I absorbed his
blood and uh, that's that's that. And they didn't buy
that defense. But if you do, and you know, they've
done research on the fact that you know, one in
eight pregnancy starts his twins, you know, is the fetus
that remains after the twin becomes reabsorbed or dies is
(08:00):
twin affected the result. I mean, there's very little research
on it, bhich so far it seems like no that
you can find a lot of support groups. In fact,
the whole reason when Kristen said that she wanted a
twin so badly, according to one support group, that is
a sign that you might have had a twin at
one point and you have suppressed the memory and you're
trying to find this person that you began life with.
(08:20):
Um So if you have a really strong desire for
a twin or some other symptoms of this according to
the website about being a womb twin survivor, or if
you're really sensitive, if you're very affected by death, if
you think about pregnancy a lot, if you express emotions
very strongly, if you always are living life to the
fullest to compensate for a loss, or if you feel
(08:41):
very tired, then it's possible you had a vanishing twin.
And I don't know about anybody, because that describes a
lot of people, but of course you know, but that's
a lot of people who you know, according to statistics,
who might have a vanishing twin. So the next time
you're feeling down, just blame it on your vanishing twin. Yeah,
next time, you know, like show up late to work
and you can be like bot, I'm sorry, my vanishing
(09:02):
twin went out last night and got super a wasted,
so he slipped in, And of course apologies. If you
do feel very sensitive about vanishing twin situations, there are
support groups out there that are very easy to find
on the internet. But I just feel like the description
of the people who might be womb twin survivors doesn't
compass an awful lot of pretty regular emotions. Now, I
(09:26):
really hope this podcast episode will provide all of our
listeners with some great cocktail party talk. That's true, especially
when your friend tells you they're pregnant. Break out some
fetus and feet two facts like there's a good chance
that one of your you know, you had two fetuses
and one's eating the other one. So you wanted to drink,
I won't. No way, you can't because you're pregnant. That's
(09:47):
like double the burn. Yeah, we're actually that's the worst
cocktail cocktail party conversation I can think of. But if
you have some cocktail talk to the dogway. Our email
is mom stuff at house atwork dot com. And right
now I have an email from that very same email
addresses from Donna, and it's about our podcasts about women
(10:10):
running colder than men, and she writes. A friend of
mine has Rainow syndrome in conjunction with lupus, and her
fingers and toes are really a deathly purplished black color
due to poor blood circulation. When she talked to her
doctor about it, she was prescribed by agra. Originally, biagra
was developed and researched for its vaso dilating properties to
treat heart health conditions like ray. Now it's hypertension and
(10:31):
heart failure. In the midst of the studies, it was
reported by patients that had improved directile dysfunction. The pharmacy
companies can make more money on a drug perrectile dysfunction
than one for the other medical conditions, despite the fact
of others actually more dangerous and thus marketed as an
a d drug. Anyway, my friend told me that the
first time she went to get her prescription filled, she
got all sorts of strange looks from the pharmacy. Several
(10:51):
people asked to clarify the prescription, questioning a woman's name
on the viagraph prescription. She said it was really embarrassing,
but it turned out it was worth the embarrassment because
once she started taking out her fingers and toes went
from nearly dead purple to a nice light blue and
on good days even pink. Uh. So, you know, just
a suggestion out there if you want to ask your
doctor about a biograph prescription that has nothing to do
(11:13):
with the rectile dysfunction. Well, I've got an email here
from the United Arab Emirates, but I don't have a
name to go with it, but this is in response
to our podcast on eyebrows, and this unnamed person writes,
I'm writing you from the U a E. In the
Arabian Gulf and I've just listened to your podcasts on eyebrows.
(11:35):
I thought you would be interested to know that here
in Arab Gulf countries, it's a definite style to have
a unibrow. Girls with unibrows are viewed as very attractive
to Arab guys and Gulf countries. The brows are still
kept very neat and shrimmed and threaded, but the hair
in the middle is left. I've even seen girls using
makeup to make a unibrow because they can't grow them.
(11:58):
And when women see other women with the of brow.
It may even be jealous of it. I just thought
you'd be interested, and I'm very interested. So thanks for
that little tidbit from the Middle East, and if you
have any tidbits to share again, Our email is mom
Stuff at how stuff works dot com. You can also
find us over on Facebook, join the conversation there and
(12:19):
tweet us at mom Stuff podcast. And finally, you can
read our blog during the week. It's stuff Mom Never
Told You at how stuff works dot com for moralness
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
dot com. To learn more about the podcast, cook on
the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage.
(12:41):
The how Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it
today on iTunes, brought to you by the reinvented two
thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
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