(BBC) Twins Michelle and Lavinia Osbourne have always shared a special connection.
But when Lavinia clicked on an email with results of an at-home DNA test in September 2022, she was filled with a sense of dread.
“Maybe subconsciously I knew,” she says.
Her test results revealed something astonishing: non-identical twins Lavinia and Michelle don’t have the same father.
They were conceived naturally, grown together in the same womb, and born to the same mother within minutes of each other – but they are half-sisters.
Michelle and Lavinia, 49, exist because of an incredibly rare biological process called heteropaternal superfecundation. For it to happen, a woman must produce more than one egg during the same cycle, the eggs must be successfully fertilised by sperm from different men, and the resulting embryos must survive the pregnancy.
Only around 20 cases have ever been identified worldwide. After months of researching their story for the BBC Radio 4 series, The Gift, I’ve found that Lavinia and Michelle are the only set of twins with different fathers ever to be documented in the UK.
For Lavinia, the revelation was devastating. She and Michelle had shared a difficult childhood where they were passed around between homes and carers. The only stability the non-identical twins had was each other.
BBC