Did you know it's possible to get pregnant while you're already pregnant?
Remember those teenage pregnancy myths we used to trade in the 6th form common room? You can’t get pregnant while standing up, you can’t get pregnant if you have sex on your period, you can’t get pregnant if you pee straight afterwards?
But there’s one more mind blowing pregnancy myth that science has just busted. Because while we previously thought it wouldn’t be possible to get pregnant when you’re already pregnant, turns out that you totally can.
Wait, what?
Yep, forget everything you learned (or rather didn’t learn if the above are anything to go on) in sex education because as reported by the NY Mag it is technically possible to be with child, when you’re already with child.
Apparently it’s all down to something called superfetation, which according to Scientific American is the onset of a subsequent pregnancy during an ongoing pregnancy.
For this crazy event to occur, a series of highly unusual events must defy the norm. First, the woman’s ovaries must still release an egg even though she is already pregnant (in a normal pregnancy a woman’s body sends a message to her ovaries to stop releasing eggs). Then, the semen must actually manage to make it past the already pregnant woman’s blocked cervix. Finally, the newly fertilised egg, would still have to attach itself to the womb wall, even though there’s already a baby growing there.
Paranoid? It gets worse. Even though the babies could have been conceived at different times, both will still be born together. So the child that was conceived second could risk being born severely prematurely.
Now before you head off to your GP to order them to switch up your contraception quick smart, rest assured that getting preggo while already preggo is extremely, EXTREMELY rare. So rare in fact that according to a report published in the European Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology there have only been a total of 11 cases reported ever! That’s eleven out of the entire world!
*exhales*
Did you realise you could get pregnant while already pregnant? Let us know @YahooStyleUK
Is it time we lifted the lid on the ‘silent trimester’ of pregnancy?