How to get pregnant with TWINS

Almost on a daily basis I hear touching and emotional stories of couples travelling on the infertility journey in their quest to have children but one of them I read by Kym Campbell left me teary today.

I have practiced as a clinical embryologist for quite sometime now and one of the questions or should I say request by lots of women is “Please, I want twins ooo”. African women love twins and maybe it is programmed into our DNA or perhaps our socialization and cultural norms have made it so.

Lets take some time to discuss this topic – “I want twins”

How twins are formed
How are twins formed?
There are two main biological ways that twins can be formed and the type determines whether they will look alike (fraternal) or not (non-fraternal)

1. Non – fraternal/non-identical twins; usually, in the natural menstrual cycle of a woman, a single egg is ovulated which is met by a sperm for fertilization to happen. In some of the cycles of some women, more than one egg (lets say 2) are released during ovulation and when both eggs are fertilized by two separate sperms and the developing embryos get implanted in the woman’s womb, then the couple will have non identical twins. Non identical twins each are in their own placenta and do not share any genetic/DNA similarity aside what siblings could have.
2. Identical/Fraternal twins; in this mechanism a single egg is fertilized by a single sperm and the developing embryo splits into two to form two separate individuals. These are identical twins. They share the same placenta (they actually sleep in the sac whiles in the womb) and their genetic/DNA makeup is the same (science/molecular medicine even finds it difficult to identify any difference between them). I have actually read stories of crimes involving twins that they have gone scot free because the investigative team could not identify which of the twin actually caused the crime even with DNA analysis– crazy huh? . It is thought that at a certain stage in the embryo (fertilized egg) development called blastocyst where the inner content of the embryo actually hatches out from its shell to get implanted in the womb, this splitting to form identical twins can happen. At the early stages of development, even a single cell picked from the embryo can develop into a complete human being. I’m not sure you want to sit in an embryology lecture now. Do you?

Identical twins lying in the same amniotic sac in the uterus

How to get pregnant with twins
These techniques and tips can increase your chance of getting pregnant with twins

1. Take fertility drugs – there are fertility drugs available that can make a woman produce more than one egg in her menstrual cycle. That way, the woman releases more than one egg during ovulation and when sperms released during intercourse fertilize these eggs you hit the jackpot. Remember this kind will not be identical though. …Lol
2. Go for an IVF treatment – fertility treatments such as the in vitro fertilization (IVF) has high tendencies to produce twins for the desiring couples. Read more to understand how the IVF procedure is performed.

Have you signed any medical consent form before? A popular statement you find therein is “there is no guarantee that ……. (bla, bla, bla…)”. And that is painfully true for aiming for twins too. None of these procedures can guarantee to give you the twins you so badly desire but they most likely can increase your chances. You would like to take your chances right?

How to increase your chances further

1. It is thought that if a woman has twins in her family line, then she also stands the chance to have twins.
2. Older women tend to have more twins than younger women. Quite paradoxical huh? It is true that as a woman ages there is a decline in the quality and quantity of her eggs but it is also true that older women seems to conceive more non-identical twins than younger women. A study in a top scientific fertility journal; Human Reproduction suggests
3. Taller women appear to have more twins….LOL (but you can’t do much about your height right now… Can you?)
4. Eat more yams – yes, it sounds really funny but a scientific study performed in Nigeria confirmed that the Yoruba tribe who consumes lots of yams has high twinning rates. (But exactly how much yam do you need to eat to conceive twins?)
5. Women of African descent have higher twinning rate; so if you are Ghanaian, already you stand a better chance at having twins than Angelina Jolie
6. Be overweight. I have come across this point during my research but considering the diseases that are associated with obesity this is not a good advise; to become obese for the sake of desiring twins.

Hold on, multiple pregnancy is not all glossy. Subscribe to this blog for subsequent posts on the risks of multiple pregnancies.

Wish you the very best. Go try it out and let me know which did the trick for you.

Peace and joy.
For more and similar articles visit www.ghanafertilityexperts.com

"Michael Bright Yakass is a certified clinical embryologist by the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) practising in one of the top fertility centres in Ghana. He is the editor and lead blogger at www.ghanafertilityexperts.com"

You can follow him on twitter @michaelyakass or @ghfertexperts