Calling party of six …
Britney Alba remembers the day she and her husband, Frankie Alba, received the news they were expecting twins. It had only been six months since they had welcomed their twin sons.
While the pair told Good Morning America they view their two sets of twins as a blessing, realizing they were upgrading to a family of six was a shock.
The Albas said twins don’t run in either of their families and for them to expect twins twice was astonishing.
“I would have never guessed in a million years that I would have one set of twins, much less a second set,” Britney, 27, added. “So we were super excited. Super excited. But it was like a laughing-and-crying-at-the-same-time moment.”
The Albas’ first set of twins – Luka and Levi – were monochorionic-diamniotic identical twins, meaning they shared the same placenta but separate amniotic sacs. But their second set of twins – Lydia and Lynlee – turned out to be monoamniotic-monochorionic identical twins. The girls shared the same placenta and amniotic sac.
“It was already rare for there to be identical twins back to back, but particularly just my twins because MoMo twins make up 1% of all twin pregnancies. It’s very rare,” Britney said of what her doctors told them.
There is not much research data available on the rarity of such twin pregnancies, but one Journal of Perinatology study estimates MoMo twin pregnancies happen in one out of every 10,000 pregnancies, while another comparative study estimates MoDi twin pregnancies occur in 0.3 percent of all pregnancies.