The Mighty Quinn Some of you may be wondering why our identical twins are... less than identical. If youre one of those people, keep reading. If not, carry on. Those Buzzfeed quizzes arent going to take themselves :p We havent talked about it on teh social medias yet, but in person you may have heard us refer to Quinn as having been growth restricted in the womb. There are several ways this can happen with identical twins, and we had a little bit of a few of them. Unequal Placental Sharing A placenta, for those who dont know, is essentially a temporary vascular organ through which a fetus receives nutrients from the mother. In the case of identical multiples, which share a placenta, each multiple gets a designated section of the placenta roughly around the time that the single fertilized egg split. This designated section will not change throughout the pregnancy. What you get is what you get. Unfortunately in Quinns case, he only got about 1/3rd of the total. Abnormal Umbilical Cord Insertion No, it didnt insert somewhere other than his belly button, it inserted abnormally on the placenta side. Normal cords insert near the center. Quinns inserted near the edge, restricting blood flow. This is probably also related to his lesser share of the placenta. Two Vessel Umbilical Cord Normal umbilical cords have three vessels. They can also have two or even one. One is problematic, two much better. Luckily Quinn had two. So imagine that all of your food comes in the form of a very thick milkshake, but you dont get very much of it, and everything you do get only comes through one of those tiny cocktail mixing straws. Thats kind of like what Quinn had to deal with for the first seven months of his development. Hes a fighter though, and at his two month checkup yesterday his pediatrician told us that he expects Quinn to have caught up to his brother within the first year.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 16:27:00 +0000