I recently came across
this article at Parents.com that mentions, among other things, the interactions of a set of twins, a girl and a boy, in the womb. The twins were seen on ultrasound pressing their cheeks together across the membrane that divided them. These same twins were observed one year after birth playing one of their favorite games, pressing their cheeks together on either side of a curtain and giggling. It should come as no surprise that just reading about this interaction was enough to bring me, in my hormone-flooded state, to tears. (Fortunately, my experience with the labile emotions of pregnancy has mostly been limited to being more than usually overcome with happiness at anything even remotely "heart-warming". You know, like a
chimpanzee who feeds tiger cubs from a bottle or
baby hats with ears.)
I was curious to know what other research had been done on the interactions of twins in the womb, which led me to an article in Scientific American, "
Social before Birth: Twins First Interact with Each Other as Fetuses". They described research done in Italy that suggested that by 14 weeks of gestation, twins began to make purposeful movements towards each other and that, by 18 weeks, they spent more time touching each other than was spent touching themselves or the walls of the uterus.
This past week, at 21 1/2 weeks, we had an ultrasound and managed to capture the following precious prenatal interaction between our own twins:
