What exactly does "spontaneous" twins mean?

Mrs.Greg

I was not doing any IF treatments but I have aunts that are twins and another aunt who had twins.  Would my twins be considered spontaneous?  Or does spontaneous mean no IF treatments, no twins in the family, nothing?  Just curious.

amanda31H

No fertility treatments.  It's not used regarding what runs in the family, etc.

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amanda31H:

No fertility treatments.  It's not used regarding what runs in the family, etc.

This, but I had IVF and mine are spontaneous identical twins. So it's a grey area for me... lol 

TwinMommy2011

Spontaneous twins means Identical twins! The egg "spontaneously" splits, and there is no known reason why it occurs. I am currently pregnant with spontaneous twins !

pea-kay

TwinMommy2011:

Spontaneous twins means Identical twins! The egg "spontaneously" splits, and there is no known reason why it occurs. I am currently pregnant with spontaneous twins !

Not quite.

Identical twins are usually spontaneous, but not always. And there are lots and lots of spontaneous fraternal twins.

hunt2005

pea-kay:

TwinMommy2011:

Spontaneous twins means Identical twins! The egg "spontaneously" splits, and there is no known reason why it occurs. I am currently pregnant with spontaneous twins !

Not quite.

Identical twins are usually spontaneous, but not always. And there are lots and lots of spontaneous fraternal twins.

Interesting! I've definitely started trying to learn more about the technical terms so that when I correct people I am giving accurate information.

So spontaneous is when a person has fraternal without any drugs/IF treatments, and most of the time with identical...

What about non-spontaneous identical twins? Would someone who did IVF and had an egg split count as spontaneous or non?

And then if you have triplets where two are identical and one is fraternal, which would you be classified as?

fallbride110406

Spontaneous = a pregnancy without any medical assistance

Fraternal vs. identical is just the TYPE of twins/triplets, etc.  Spontaneous just refers to how the pregnancy came to be.  My great grandmother had 3 sets of spontaneous twins, all three sets were fraternal.  Spontaneous should be interchangeable with unassisted. 

hunt2005

But are identical twins conceived while on Clomid, etc, not spontaneous? I mean, Clomid and all those drugs don't have any correlation with an increase in identical twins, right?

veronicacorningstone

hunt2005:

But are identical twins conceived while on Clomid, etc, not spontaneous? I mean, Clomid and all those drugs don't have any correlation with an increase in identical twins, right?

I haven't heard of Clomid having anything to do with increasing the chances of identical twins.   So I would consider identical twins during a Clomid cycle, spontaneous.

I did IVF with ICSI, which means an embryologist actually injected the sperm into the egg.  There are some who believe that can cause an embryo to split, resulting in identical twins.  So, if I only transferred one embryo and had twins, I wouldn't consider that spontaneous.  It's really a grey area.  I think the real lesson here is, people should not use "natural" ever, when talking about twins.