Mum gives births to twins conceived nine days apart

There are only 14 known cases around the world of people conceiving while already pregnant.

A mum has given birth to twins which were conceived nine days apart in a ‘miracle’ that has a one in 600 million chance of happening.

Jordan Parks, 27, used fertility treatment to have her first son Freddy, now three. Although Ms Parks and her husband Jason wanted more children, they decided against going through similar treatments again. 

But in February 2019 Ms Parks realised she was pregnant again.

And to her surprise, when she went for her first scan, she was told that she was in fact carrying two babies who were conceived more than a week apart.

Her son was ten weeks and two days old and her daughter was just nine weeks.

Conceiving a baby while already pregnant is called the superfetation phenomena. There are only 14 known cases around the world and Ms Parks said it was ‘incredible’ and a ‘blessing’ to have her children in such a rare way. 

Ms Parks said: ‘Firstly, I couldn’t believe I was going to have two babies, and then secondly this incredibly rare thing had happened to me where I had gotten pregnant twice, after believing I’d never be pregnant again. It was crazy.

‘I was looking at them and one was so much bigger while the other just looked like a little tiny marble.

‘I started to panic. I thought the smaller one had maybe passed away and that’s why it wasn’t as developed.’ 

The smaller baby, Aubrey, started to struggle with cysts on her brain after 22 weeks. Doctors told the couple that Arthur, who was conceived first, was thriving but Aubrey would probably not survive the pregnancy.

The couple was advised to terminate her so that Arthur had the best chance. 

The mum, from Doncaster, said: ‘For the whole of my pregnancy you could see how much smaller she was.

‘Jason and I sat down and had a big discussion about what we wanted to do and we decided we didn’t want to terminate and we would just let the pregnancy take its course.’ 

But just two weeks later, the parents were told that most of the cysts had disappeared and Aubrey would survive. 

‘I was so grateful we chose to carry on with the pregnancy. From this point everything else in the pregnancy went fairly smoothly, it was quite a breeze actually,’ said Ms Parks. 

Both babies were born during an emergency C-section and are now healthy one-year-olds who their mum says are ‘little balls of fun’. 

She added: ‘I have heard that superfetation could happen with animals, but I never in a million years thought that it would happen to me.

‘When I tell people about my pregnancy sometimes they don’t even believe that is it a real thing. They are so shocked.

‘The twins are amazing with each other and Freddy is absolutely loving having a little brother and sister.’

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