A couple got the shock of their lives when an ultrasound revealed they were expecting twins, but it wasn’t until they saw the newborns next to each other that they discovered another major surprise.
In late 2024, Rebecca Michels and her husband were thrilled to learn they were expanding their family again. Michels, 37, who lives in Sydney, Australia, loved the idea of giving her son Braxton, 10, a younger sibling.
It was a difficult pregnancy, however, as Michels said. News week that she was suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum and experiencing significant pelvic pain. When the couple arrived at the hospital for their first ultrasound, they were ready and excited to see their little bundle of joy on the monitor.
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But nothing could have prepared them for what the sonographer told them next.
“We were in the ultrasound room when the sonographer told us there were two babies,” Michels said. “I’m not going to lie: the room was very quiet for the rest of the appointment. My husband put his head in his hands and I remained silent.
“It’s a huge thing to take in: two babies at once, double the diapers and double the childcare costs. We were thinking about how we were going to manage everything, including time off from work. There was a lot to think about, but once that initial shock wore off, it got really exciting.”
As the babies were in separate bags and had separate placentas, it was assumed they were fraternal twins. Fraternal twins develop when two separate eggs are fertilized and, genetically, are no more similar than other siblings.
However, having separate sacs and placentas does not necessarily mean the twins are fraternal. Dichorionic diamniotic (DCDA) twins each have their own placenta and amniotic sac. Although all non-identical twins are DCDA, some identical twins can also be DCDA.
In fact, during appointments, sonographers often described the twins as “just brothers and sisters sharing a house.”
Michels said: “Repeatedly hearing ‘separate bags, separate placentas’ made it easy for us to assume that these were just two separate babies growing up together. We didn’t find out their genders during the pregnancy, but we had convinced ourselves that we were probably having a boy and a girl.”
On May 28, 2025, twins, Capri and Kenzie, were born just 30 seconds apart. To Michels’ great astonishment, she welcomed two little girls, which was “a big surprise”.
Kenzie was born in her amniotic sac and needed help to breathe, so she was taken straight to a ward for specialist care. She stayed there for five days because she also had difficulty maintaining her blood sugar levels.
As Kenzie needed special care, it was not possible to see the twins side by side very often during the first few days. However, four days after their birth, it became clear how similar they were. The nurses even suggested a DNA test, raising questions about the hypothesis that they were fraternal twins.
Michels knew she wanted to proceed with the DNA test immediately. After so much uncertainty throughout the pregnancy, she didn’t want any more surprises.
“Seeing how similar they looked made us curious,” Michels said. “We also wanted them to know for themselves and felt that having clear information about whether they were the same could be helpful for their medical history.”
The DNA test was carried out in July and, three days later, the results came back.
Incredibly, the DNA test confirmed that Capri and Kenzie are identical twins with a probability of 99.999999994 percent. According to the test results, they were also 16 billion times more likely to be identical than fraternal.
Identical twins develop when a single fertilized egg divides into two embryos. Because they come from the same fertilized egg, they share the same genetic material.
It was a wonderful revelation for the family. The couple had thought they were having a boy and a girl throughout the pregnancy, but finding out they had identical twins was “a nice end to all the surprises”.
Although Capri and Kenzie may look similar, they are developing their own personalities and Michels now notices many differences between them.
Michels said News week: “They’re quite different, but they’ll do things at exactly the same time, which is funny to watch. Capri is our little deep thinker. She reminds me of myself: stubborn, determined, and happy to sit and focus on building blocks or work on something. Kenzie is our crazy little girl. She loves running around laughing, confronting her big brother, or running around the house.”
After the arrival of her twins, Michels documented her motherhood journey on TikTok and Instagram. She feels lucky to have been blessed with such wonderful surprises and loves watching the twins grow and develop alongside their big brother, who is “absolutely infatuated” with them.
“We thought we were having our second child and we ended up with our second and third,” Michels said. “They each brought their own little personalities into our family and made it complete. I wouldn’t change it for anything.”
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Contact Newsweek editors about this story: Charlotte Nisbet And Paul Donnelley.
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