Twins married to twins give birth minutes apart

Sanguine

Thu, Jul 23 2015, 11:32 am

Just a sweet story

Quote:

Twins married to twins give birth minutes apart

Israeli identical twin sisters married to identical twin brothers deliver their first-born girls almost simultaneously

According to multiple accounts, identical twins sometimes share psychic bonds that allow them to share feelings even when they are not together. Whether or not that’s the case, it’s pretty safe to assume that for a few hours in the Israeli coastal town of Netanya on Sunday, two sets of identical twins were experiencing a lot of the same emotions.

The four, identical brothers married to identical sisters, gave birth to baby girls 20 minutes apart at the city’s Laniado Hospital.

While the newborn cousins aren’t twins, they share quite a bit with their mothers, who were also born twenty minutes apart.

Brothers Niv and Ran Cohen, who assumed a religious lifestyle after joining the Hasidic Breslov sect two years ago, told the news website Walla that their wives’ pregnancies were not coordinated.

The Cohens were mentored by the recently deceased Rabbi Eliezer Shlomo Schick, who introduced the brothers to their wives.

“We always knew the match was heaven sent, but this week we got confirmation,” said Niv, who was married four days after his brother.

The mother of the wives said she’s gotten plenty of exercise over the last several days. “I’ve spent the whole week running in between the two delivery rooms,” she said.

According to the ultra-Orthodox news website Kikar HaShabat, many in Israel’s Breslov hasidic community see the births as miraculous and a sign from God.

The Cohen brothers agree. “We see the Almighty as having bestowed this upon us by virtue of the rabbi,” Niv said, according to Kikar HaShabat.

“Its the best feeling in the world,” he added.

mommyla

Thu, Jul 23 2015, 1:10 pm

Cool!

Those new babies are genetically siblings - how weird is that?

GoodnDear

Thu, Jul 23 2015, 1:28 pm

Oh wow! Ultra cool!!

Shani88

Thu, Jul 23 2015, 1:51 pm

This is too cute

Iymnok

Thu, Jul 23 2015, 3:08 pm

I hope no one gets confused!

tigerwife

Thu, Jul 23 2015, 3:48 pm

Iymnok wrote:

I hope no one gets confused!

That's what I was thinking about the marriage 🙈🙈🙈

Sanguine

Thu, Jul 23 2015, 3:59 pm

I wonder if they'l look similar (don't know if the mothers are identical too). I see (unintentional) competition between the parents when one girl is faster to walk, talk... brighter... (only if there's a real difference)

Ema of 5

Thu, Jul 23 2015, 4:05 pm

mommyla wrote:

Cool!

Those new babies are genetically siblings - how weird is that?

im having trouble understanding this, can you explain? thanks!

WastingTime

Thu, Jul 23 2015, 4:16 pm

My mother has friends exactly like this. And she always said that the cousins are genetically siblings. so cute! Just hope husbands and wives recognize their spouse!

pickle321

Thu, Jul 23 2015, 4:30 pm

Hope the babies don't get mixed up. How do they know the difference? Both are girls with the same last name and probably look alike!

chaya35

Thu, Jul 23 2015, 4:34 pm

pickle321 wrote:

Hope the babies don't get mixed up. How do they know the difference? Both are girls with the same last name and probably look alike!

Wonder if they will name them the same.

JMM-uc

Thu, Jul 23 2015, 4:44 pm

rising hero

Thu, Jul 23 2015, 5:04 pm

chaya35 wrote:

Wonder if they will name them the same.

That would be silly. It would only add more confusion.

Ema of 5

Thu, Jul 23 2015, 5:15 pm

4sons wrote:

My mother has friends exactly like this. And she always said that the cousins are genetically siblings. so cute! Just hope husbands and wives recognize their spouse!

Why? Can someone explain?

JMM-uc

Thu, Jul 23 2015, 5:17 pm

eema of 3 wrote:

Why? Can someone explain?

Because their parents have the same DNA!

zaq

Thu, Jul 23 2015, 7:40 pm

4sons wrote:

Just hope husbands and wives recognize their spouse!

Not to worry, families of identical twins learn to tell them apart very well. I should hope that even b'show couples, by the time they are married long enough to have a full-term baby, would have learned to tell them apart.

tzila

Thu, Jul 23 2015, 8:35 pm

This link explains it pretty well
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com.....x.htm

Q: If a set of identical twin women married a set of identical twin men and subsequently had children would their children genetically be siblings? I think they will, my friend A.J. says I am crazy. Help! (Juliana, Casselberry, Florida)

A: You are right; A.J. is wrong. All the children in both families are genetic siblings, in addition to being just plain siblings within each family. See figure at left.

First, a quick refresher on definitions:

· Chromosomes are long strands of DNA molecules (with associated proteins) that carry essentially all the hereditary information.

· DNA are big molecules that contain genetic information (genes) for making proteins.

· Genes are snippets of DNA molecules that determine how our cells make proteins and, therefore, how our bodies look and function.

How inheritance works: Each parent has a full set of 46 chromosomes, but each only passes 23 chromosomes to their child. Which 23 does a parent pass on to a given child? It's a dice throw — which results in a unique set of 23. That's why siblings differ: each has a different set of 23 chromosomes from each parent. (Only identical twins get exactly the same set of 23 chromosomes from each parent.)

How does a parent's reproductive process create new chromosomes from his or her chromosome pool to pass to a child? "Before fertilization, eggs in the mother and sperm in the father undergo genetic recombination where pieces of the homologous [similar in function] chromosomes swap places," say reproductive biologist J. Lannett Edwards and her student Rebecca Payton in an e-mail from the University of Tennessee. This ensures every egg and every sperm has a unique combination of traits. "Therefore, when an egg having 23 chromosomes and a sperm also having 23 chromosomes unite to form a new individual (46 chromosomes), that child has a combination of genes that is different from both parents and different from any non-twin sibling."

Identical twins get exactly the same chromosome set from each parent through a fluke in the reproductive process. After the sperm fertilizes the egg (which forms an individual with 46 chromosomes) the resulting embryo will "sometimes split into two identical embryos." Identical twins result.

Definition of genetic siblings: "Two children are siblings if the chromosomes both children received were derived from the same pool of chromosomes coming from their parents," Edwards and Payton say.

Consider the children, Andy and Annie, of Family A (parents: Al and Alice). Andy received 23 chromosomes from his father, Al, and 23 from his mother, Alice. The same is true for Annie.

However, because of genetic recombination mentioned above, the set that Annie got from each parent is somewhat different from Andy's set. Annie has in common with Andy some chromosomes, but not all. So the instructions for making Annie and Andy are similar, but not identical.

Since Al and Alice are identical twins to Ben and Blanch, the chromosome pool belonging to Al and Alice is identical to the chromosome pool belonging to Ben and Blanch. "Because all the kids get their chromosomes from an identical pool, they could be considered as 'genetic' siblings," Edwards and Payton say.

zaq

Thu, Jul 23 2015, 9:47 pm

pickle321 wrote:

Hope the babies don't get mixed up. How do they know the difference? Both are girls with the same last name and probably look alike!

Obvious racial differences aside, all newborns look pretty much alike. That's why they put ID bracelets on them long before barcoding everything from meals to meds was even a science-fiction fantasy. These babies were born in separate delivery rooms, and unless the couples share an apartment, each infant will be living with her parents in a separate household. I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Furthermore, as my friend who has identical twins told me: "At first we were afraid we would mix them up, but then we realized--it doesn't matter! So what if the one we called Serena ends up being called Yelena and vice versa? We basically went eeny meeny miney mo when it came to naming them." If Baby A wound up going home with Baby B's parents, would it really matter so much? Genetically they're siblings, and they have all the same grandparents, cousins and so on, anyway.

Fabulous

Thu, Jul 23 2015, 9:51 pm

zaq wrote:

it matters halachically in terms of naming and getting married or for davening for refuah or something. In the non-jewish world it wouldn't matter.

zaq

Thu, Jul 23 2015, 10:05 pm

Fabulous wrote:

it matters halachically in terms of naming and getting married or for davening for refuah or something. In the non-jewish world it wouldn't matter.

If they were really mixed up in infancy and brought up with the wrong name, I have every confidence that the KBH would know for whom the tefillah was meant. And while a mixup like that would mean that if they wanted to marry a cousin, they would really be marrying a sibling, it still doesn't matter, because nobody with a grain of sense would allow such a marriage to happen. ALL the children of these two couples will be genetic siblings; any marriage between them would be, genetically speaking, incest. Legally permissible in some places, maybe, but enough to make any genetic counselor break out in hives.