When you tell people you're having one boy and one girl and they ask if they're identical...

JennMarie1 · November 2014

How do you not face palm? I have a hard time keeping a straight face or responding without sarcasm. I give a pass to people who ask after just finding out we're having twins, they're surprised and they haven't had a chance to process. But plenty of people who've known for months have popped up asking me this and the snark in me wants to crack joke answers. And if I'm hungry at the time forget about it, I'm a time-bomb of ill will if I'm not sufficiently fed.

Anyone else getting this question or do I just have anatomically-challenged friends and coworkers?

persephonerose · November 2014

You would not believe how many nurses I had ask me this when I was readmitted for my breathing issues. In my file it stated I had twins in the NICU and they needed to make sure they took me down as much as possible to see them. Each new person would ask what sex they were, when I said one boy and one girl they would immediately follow up with "are they identical". I started to wonder if it was just the next question they had on their mind when they heard "twins" and not that they were ignorant.

lupineaura · November 2014

WAMOM said:

I actually read there CAN be identical boy/girl twins depending on how the egg splits and which baby gets which chromosomes. It's incredibly rare but not impossible. This is why they are changing it from identical and fraternal to monozygotic or dizygotic.

From Wikipedia entry on twins (not the best source, I know...)

Monozygotic twins always have different phenotypes. Normally due to an environmental factor or the deactivation of different X chromosomes in female monozygotic twins, and in some extremely rare cases, due to aneuploidy, twins may express different sexual phenotypes, normally from an XXY Klinefelter syndrome zygote splitting unevenly.^[25]^[26]^[27]

So it's POSSIBLE, but it's so incredibly unlikely that I still think it's a fairly unreasonable question.

Ylvelill · November 2014

@Happy_Yahoo_Personaler‌ I like that one. All I came up with was "No one has a penis and the other not so much...." People usually get embarrassed when I say it though so I try to only use it on obnoxious folks.

I did have the question asked the other day by a young lady in a restaurant and the woman next to me who was also doting on the babies just about bit her head off for being an idiot, it was quite amusing and saved me the trouble of responding.

BabyKsMommy · November 2014

I did have my friend the other day ask if I painted one of their toe nails to tell them apart. I said no, one has a vagina. I think it was just a blonde moment. Lol

ginadenisee · November 2014

I get that all the time! Especially at work! But they say it like a comment that they're unsure about. Like oh so that means they're not identical, uhhhhh, right? And I'm just like DUH!

minirella · November 2014

I have had people ask and it doesn't bother me one bit. I realize that not everyone is educated about twins.

I have never heard of identical b/g twins and I don't find Wikipedia to be an accurate medical resource.

MKateG · November 2014

Lol this just makes me laugh, I don't understand the disconnect with ppl on it. I tried to explain to someone why they couldn't be identical one time and their response was "but ive seen some b/g twins that look A LOT alike..." And my thought was...okay I've seen some siblings that look A LOT alike! ....Oh well I give up!

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