Odalis Martinez, a young woman from San Pablo, California, was subject to an extremely rare case of superfetation. Due to this phenomenon, she gave birth to two little girls on August 10, 2021, who were not conceived at the same time.
It all started in November 2020, so that after a very painful miscarriage, Odalis became pregnant again. The 25-year-old mother told her story in an interview given to our British colleagues from DailyMail. “I was very happy to be pregnant again. I felt very lucky. I know some who tried to get pregnant again without success, so it was also my fear, but fortunately it happened very quickly“, she said.
Because of this fear, the couple had made several attempts at conception during the same month, and an amazing thing happened. During the first ultrasound, the doctor revealed to them that they were expecting two babies, and the size of the fetuses indicated two different conception dates! During the attempts, the young woman is indeed got pregnant when she had already been pregnant for five days! As a result, the Martinez couple had two term dates, and Imelda and Lilo showed up on August 10, 2021.
What is superfetation?
Getting pregnant while the woman is already carrying an embryo is called superfetation. This extremely rare phenomenon only affected eleven women in the worldincluding an Australian in 2015. Concretely, the eggs are released from the ovary at two distinct times (here at 5 day intervals), before being fertilized and then implanted. Normally, hormonal changes due to pregnancy prevent further fertilization, except in very rare cases.
Relatively complicated to understand (and to believe, for some), this phenomenon gives the Martinez couple a hard time explaining the resemblance between their daughters. Because although they look identical, they are technically not twins. “It’s too disturbing for people”, confided Odalis, and to add that when the remark is made to them, they now prefer to say that their daughters are twins, rather than explain the whole affair. “Even though it’s a lot of work, I wouldn’t change our situation for the world!” she testifies with a smile on her face.