HOW A PREGNANT WOMAN CAN STILL GET PREGNANT

Michelle with her two babies conceived  5 weeks
apart, born same day. 

Is it possible to get pregnant again when you are already pregnant? When this question was put to some women, both in the US and Nigeria, their answers were a resounding NO. "Impossible," many said. With this notion, the women go ahead to eat spicy food and have unprotected sex as often as they want and enjoy it the long "safe" period. 

Though this appears to be beyond the extremes of fertility, it is very possible for a pregnant woman to get pregnant again. Not only is it possible, it has happened in real life, weeks after pregnancy. It is rare, like one in one million, but it does exist, and the medical term is "Superfetation".

According to Dr. Connie Hedmark, of the Marquette General Hospital in Michigan, "Pregnancy hormones usually shut down a woman's system, making it impossible for her to ovulate during her pregnancy," but he accepts the possibility of getting pregnant while being pregnant and says, "This is why superfetation is so remarkable."

And the simple explanation is that it occurs, according to Karen Boyle, a recognized expert in reproductive medicine, "when implantation of the first embryo is delayed, preventing that initial spike in hormones". On a good day, HCG hormone is produced "only when an egg is fertilized, and this hormone usually sends signal to the body to stop producing eggs.

Michelle Hutchins had two babies the same day, Finlay and Macey but they were conceived one month apart. As reported by MailOnline's Health segment, "They were, incredibly, conceived at different times - Finley at the end of 2005, Macey at the start of 2006 - when their mother Michelle (living then with her husband Darren in Brentwood, Essex,) fell pregnant while already bearing a baby".I had no idea you could fall pregnant while pregnant,' says Michelle, 37. 

Another woman that experienced superfetation was "Julia Grovenburg, a 33-year-old from Fort Smith, Arkansas, who conceive while already pregnant". Shawna Cohen wrote that Julia and her husband Todd "tried to have a baby for three years without much luck. But she finally got pregnant and, two and a half weeks later, they conceived another baby. The babies were born on the same day via c-section.

In Julia's words, “Initially, at our first ultrasound, the technician suggested we were 11 weeks pregnant, but since I’d been taking pregnancy tests routinely every month, Todd and I knew that number wasn't accurate because I’d had my period in-between the time frame.”

There have been over 11 cases of Women getting pregnant while being pregnant. And this is different from "superfecundation" which is a case of two eggs released during the same cycle are fertilized at separate times. Also, the babies could not be called, "twins" (in the real sense of it), because they were carried in difference sacs. 

Could this not be the case with very "identical twins" we have in Nigeria and parts of Africa, especially cases where initial Ultrasound shows a single foetus but later, two babies are born? I am just thinking, because I have seen cases where the "twins" are so difference in sized, growth, faces and other features. Again, I am just wondering. But it is established that a pregnant woman can get pregnant.

Now, this is not to scare you off sex during pregnancy, as many couples enjoy it a lot. But, just note that you could be the one in the one million to carry two babies of difference gestation (LOL....some would even say amen to that).

But one question I would ask is, what if the second conception comes from a different man? This was what happened in the case of Twin babies with different fathers. What do you think?

~ Emdee David