Can I Get Pregnant Again While Already Pregnant
Can a adult female get pregnant when she is already meaning? In other words, can she have two foetuses in her uterus at different stages of development?
The technical term for this is superfetation. In humans, it's possible, simply information technology's very uncommon.
Two thousand years ago, that great Greek thinker Aristotle wondered about this very topic, specifically as regards the hare.
Aristotle noticed that when a hare gave birth, quite often the offspring in a unmarried litter would fall into two singled-out classes: there would exist a bunch of full-sized robust baby hares, and another bunch of scrawny frail infant hares.
It was, he idea, as though the female parent hare had become pregnant and and then — while pregnant — had conceived a second time.
At that place was goose egg fundamentally incorrect with the smaller, weedy offspring, Aristotle thought, autonomously from the fact that they had not spent plenty time growing in their mother's uterus. And he was right.
Why is it so rare?
Commonly in humans, there are three separate barriers to stop a female from getting meaning again if she is already pregnant.
The first barrier is the hormonal changes after conception that stop the ovaries from releasing some other egg.
The 2nd barrier is concrete: a mucous plug. Near immediately after conception, a plug forms in the cervix and sits at the top of the vagina. This plug stops whatever other sperm from entering the uterus and getting to a second egg.
3rd, there are physical and chemic changes that happen to the inner lining of the uterus in pregnancy. These changes usually terminate a second fertilised egg from beingness able to adhere to the uterine wall.
Withal, some fauna species manage to become effectually all these barriers. About 1 to 2 per cent of all pregnant cows show signs of being potentially fertile while they are already pregnant, and superfetation has been observed in animals such as the mouse, the rabbit, the sheep, the buffalo, the mink, and the Australian swamp wallaby.
Could superfetation happen to me?
Superfetation is extremely uncommon in humans, with fewer than a dozen cases in the medical literature.
A typical case is that of Julia Grovenburg, a 31-year-old woman from Arkansas.
Ms Grovenburg and her partner had been trying to become pregnant for three years, and had begun to consider adoption of a child.
But amazingly she conceived twice in 2009 — a few weeks apart. The Daily Mail claimed that, in a "drastic and last attempt to have children of their own", the couple had given it i final try.
This is a curious use of the word desperate.
I might exist erstwhile-fashioned, but information technology seems odd to me to regard sexual intercourse as "a desperate and terminal attempt" to go pregnant.
It makes you lot wonder what measures they tried before they got desperate.
Anyhow, Ms Grovenburg was pregnant — simply then things went odd: the ultrasound showed two independent babies, each living in their own divide amniotic sac. But one was much larger and more than adult than the other.
As the ultrasounds scans mounted up for Ms Grovenburg, both foetuses seemed to exist growing normally and healthily, though information technology appeared as if i foetus had simply started a few weeks later on the other.
In other words, Mrs Grovenburg had conceived a second baby a few weeks after condign pregnant with the get-go.
No fashion to prove it
Now nosotros don't accept rock-solid proof that this is what happened. We would need a series of ultrasound scans to prove that.
These scans would need to document a serial of changes — starting with no foetus or amniotic sac in the uterus, and and then a single foetus in its single amniotic sac, and a second foetus appearing in their own second amniotic sac after a few weeks.
People don't commonly get a series of ultrasound scans immediately after sexual intercourse, so this kind of hard data is difficult to get.
But in that location is some evolutionary biology behind superfetation. Female European brown hares frequently have a second pregnancy while already pregnant. This means females can accept about i tertiary more offspring in each breeding flavour.
For humans, more babies each breeding cycle isn't always a plus — especially if you're trying to become a good dark's sleep.
Posted , updated
Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-04-11/dr-karl-superfetation-can-you-get-pregnant-during-pregnancy/8430238
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