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It’s Official, They’re Identical!

mark | 23 June 2007 | 8:50 pm

100% identical DNA confirms it.

I’ve been wanting to get back to blogging for some time now, but these boys keep us so busy, we’ve barely got time to do anything but the minimum. Nevertheless, here I am, back to the blog.

Do they look identical?

So we signed Cedar and Lucas up to the Australian Twins Registry which offers us the opportunity to take part in various studies – twins are of course an ideal experimental opportunity :-). They are involved in a ‘tooth emergence’ study – we track the emergence of their teeth and send in the details. In exchange, the researchers picked up the $500 tab for DNA testing (the only way we could know whether they were identical or fraternal as they were dichorionic – had two separate sacks and placentas).

The tests came back and in fact they are identical. Also, as it turns out, male-male dichorionic twins are the least common of all types – so Lucas and Cedar are part of an elite club which number only 1-1.5 million in the world – a unique experience to be sure. Their type of twinning means that the egg divided within 2 days of fertilisation. Also, ‘the children of identical twins are half-siblings rather than cousins’ due to the amount of genetic material they share! (For more interesting factoids, check out the Wikipedia page on identical twins.)

At nine months and one week, their personalities are emerging with full force. Lucas is curious, bold and goes like mad until he crashes. Cedar however, is introspective, observant and is a slow burn – he never wants to sleep. Actually, it seems their personalities have been expressing these tendencies for months now – even in the womb – in ultrasounds Lucas would be doing somersaults while Cedar would kick back and relax. Having said this, they often swap these roles – in the last week Cedar has been much more explorative while Lucas has been hanging back a bit. Spose its always hard to pigeon-hole someone’s personlality :-).

Well, better get back to work, I’m teaching a course at the University of Melbourne, Media Futures and New Technologies, for which I have to do a fair bit of preparation… So here’s the usual barrage of videos and movies to get you caught up on all the crazy twinness.