What are the chances of having twins?

[Guest101]

Hi,
I have a long family history of twins in my family and I just found that my niece may be expecting. Here is the family history starting with my niece.

Niece is a twin
Her father (my brother) is a surviving twin
I (her aunt) lost twins
Nieces grandmother ( my mom) is a surviving twin
Nieces great grandmother is a twin
Nieces great grandmothers twin had twins (3 sets but only set survived)
Nieces great great grandmother had 2 sets of twins ( one set girls one set boys)

So my question is...

What are her chances of having twins? No twins in the family were identically.

 

[Smiler82]

You may know about this already but there is such a thing as hyperovulation and it can run in families. I'm afraid I have no stats but maybe if you Google it you'll find some figures. Twins through hyperovulation tend to be hereditary (unless hyperovulation happened due to fertility drugs or IVF etc) whereas identical twins are pure chance and the chances of identical twins are fairly small.

If you have the hyperovulation gene I don't think it necessarily means you release more than one egg every single cycle, and even if you do there are plenty of variables so it's also possible to initially conceive twins but one may not survive too early to know that it was twins to start with.

Sorry I haven't really answered your exact question but hopefully some of this is useful. I learnt all this when I was on fertility drugs and wondered about twins. I guess you might just have to wait until your niece has her first scan. Hope all goes well x

 

[Lownthwaite]

I'm a fraternal twin - I've been involved in twin studies since I was little so know quite a bit about it.........

Fraternal (non-identical) twins (or the hyperovulation) only runs down the maternal side (female side). They say if the pregnant woman herself is a twin, her mother is a twin or her grandmother is a twin then there is a higher chance of her conceiving fraternal twins.

Identical twins are regarded as flukes.

I had a higher chance of having twins being a fraternal twin myself but both my DD and this baby are both singletons.

 

[Dream.dream]

Identical twins are regarded as a fluke , however I think it can run in families as my great grandma was an identical twin, and so is my grandma and then my dad and uncle are identical twins , and my great aunt had a set as well seems like too many for me to be coincidence?

 

[miana]

As far as I know if it runs on the mothers side of the family you are at a higher risk/chance of twins?
Fraternal twins run on my mothers side eep! My uncle, grandma, grandma's sister, great grandma (2 sets of twins) and my great great grandma. It's yet to skip a generation......so I feel I may be screwed lol. My sister is hoping to be the one to get them, and she is welcome lol.

 

[miana]

Come to think of it my uncle wouldn't really have anything to do with it, that would be his wife, but their twins will have a stupidly high chance of having twins themselves

 

[Hevalouaddict]

Twins and triplets run on my side my grandmas aunt had 2 sets of triplets and one of them had twins my grandad was a twin and his brother has twins I'm expecting my second set of twins