A Fort Worth, Texas couple welcomed twin boys conceived a week apart in October 2021, in a rare phenomenon called superfetation.
After suffering three miscarriages, Cara Winhold was wary of the news that she was pregnant.
When she reached the fifth week of pregnancy, in April 2021, the woman underwent an ultrasound to check if everything was progressing correctly.
But they didn't detect a fetal heartbeat.
Cara and Blake Winhold's twins. Courtesy of Cara Winhold via NBC
"It was still early days. I knew I couldn't give up hope. It's not uncommon not to see a heartbeat at five weeks," Winhold, 31, told NBC's TODAY show.
Together with her husband Blake, she returned to the doctor's office two weeks later.
"She was petrified, my blood pressure must have been very high. I remember she was sitting there shaking," she recalled.
In a few minutes, fear gave way to joy: there was not only one healthy heartbeat, but two.
"Everyone in the room was in shock," said Winhold, who always wanted to give her eldest son, 3-year-old Wyatt, a brother.
"I couldn't speak, I was crying.
She was really very confused”, she said, “my husband couldn't say a word either, he didn't know what to say”.
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Medical calculations determined that the second fetus had been conceived a week after the first, a situation that rarely occurs due to the usual gestation process.
"It happens when a second pregnancy implants a few days or weeks after the first one occurs," Dr. Lisa Thiel, a doctor of maternal-fetal medicine in Michigan, told TODAY.
"A new egg is fertilized by a new sperm," he said.
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"The reason this is so rare is because hormones are released by the woman's body to prevent another ovulation and a thick mucus is created on the cervix to prevent any other sperm from entering the uterus at that time. moment," he explained.
On October 25, Colson and Cayden Winhold were born.
Colson, the "biggest," weighed in at 6 pounds, 5 ounces;
Cayden weighed in at 4 pounds, 9 ounces.
