An Englishwoman defied the odds this week by giving birth to identical triplets – who were conceived while she was on the birth control pill. The unsuspecting mom found out she was pregnant in her 25th week of pregnancy, at which point she was still taking her birth control pills.
Less than a week later, Allison Penn gave birth to identical triplets – three little boys named Logan, Eli, and Colin. Doctors postulated that this confluence of events – conceiving while on the pill and then giving birth to identical triplets – is a one in 200 million occurrence.
Identical twins are formed when a single embryo splits in half, creating two babies with the same genetic make-up. For identical triplets to form, one of the first two embryos needs to split again, creating “three-of-a-kind.”
Worldwide, identical twins are born in roughly once out of every 333 deliveries. Identical triplets are an extremely rare event, occurring less than one time out of every 500,000 births. Since birth control pills are widely considered to prevent over 99% of conceptions, having identical triplets while on the pill is considerably less likely than winning the lottery.
Related Links:
- Video: Multiple Births from Sex Health Guru
- Triplets and Multiple Births from Wikipedia
- More about Multiples from WebMD
