Mixed-Race Couple Give Birth To Black & White Twins - For The 2nd Time!

By Rebecca Camber
Last updated at 12:51 AM on 01st January 2009

They like to say their family is two in a million.

For Alison Spooner and her partner Dean Durrant's offspring have defied the odds - not once, but twice.

Seven years after having one black twin and one white twin, the 27-year-old mother has given birth to a second set of twins with different coloured skin at odds of one in 500,000.
Seeing double again: Alison and Dean with, from left, Hayleigh holding Leah, and Lauren holding Miya

When the couple's first daughters arrived in 2001, they were astonished to see that Lauren had her mother's blue eyes and red hair, while her twin Hayleigh had dark skin and hair, like her father, Dean.
So when Miss Spooner, from Fleet, in Hampshire, found out she was pregnant again this year, her friends and family joked that they ought to take a bet out on the same thing happening again.
Doctors who delivered the sisters early, because of fears for their health, were relieved to find them well, but also amazed that the second set of twin girls were born with different skin tones.
As her parents discovered when the girls were laid side by side in the hospital cot, Miya resembles her father and Leah has inherited her mother's looks.
It is rare enough for two sets of twins to be born to the same parents, but the chances of them inheriting different skin and hair colour from their mother and father are just two in a million.
The genetic phenomenon only happens when two separate eggs are fertilised by different sperm, unlike identical twins who share their genetic make-up having been conceived from one fertilised egg that splits to form two embryos.
'I was shocked when I first found out I was pregnant with twins again - but I never thought for one second they would turn out the same as last time,' Miss Spooner said.
'After the babies were born they weren't breathing properly, so they were taken to a special care unit.'
The former recruitment consultant added: 'It wasn't until about five days after they were born that we saw them side by side for the first time.
'And when they were together it was clear that one was darker than the other. It was unbelievable.'

Doctors at Frimley Park Hospital, in Surrey, decided to deliver the babies on November 13 by Caesarean section, 37 weeks into the pregnancy, when scans revealed they were in the breech position.
This can cause complications during birth that can endanger the babies' lives.
However, despite their early arrival, both girls were born healthy, with Miya weighing 4lb lloz and Leah 5lb 10oz. Their father Dean, 33, a paver who is of West Indian origin, said: 'It was a real shock to the system when I found out we were having twins again.
'I didn't think the same thing would happen again.
'I was blown away when I saw them together. I didn't know until then that there was such a big difference between the two.
'It was clear to see but they were rushed away after they were born so we didn't realise until we saw them together. We have a very special family.'

 

It is not at all uncommon for fraternal twins to resemble either parent, paternal twins are no more alike than any other sibling. The thing that bugs me is that it is such a big "issue". If I were the parent, I would NOT be having my kids paraded in front of the news media because of this.

 

Do you mean fraternal twins?

 

Yes, sorry, it's that Spanish thing you know, getting in the way again.

Quates, Gemiles, Paternales, Maternales, etc....

 

LoL, okay, I was just wondering because you kind of confused me. Okay :smt023

I am a fraternal twin myself and my sister and I are as different as night and day. We're not different races but, I'm "lighter" and she's darker with brown eyes and darker hair. Our personalities are very different too. We don't get along at all either :smt019

*Edit* Something I always thought was weird (talking about eyes) is both of our parents have blue eyes and my eyes are blue (NO one in our family on my mother's side has brown eyes). But my fraternal twin sister's eyes are brown. Unless my father's parent's or further back had brown eyes, but I wouldn't know anything about that.

 

Noble:

That's cool. But, in Britain, there are at least two "Black" couples that I know of that have given birth to "White" or white looking children:

The first is Cynthia and Dickson Unoarumhi and family:



There are two other Black British couples I remember, Carlton and Cynthia Golding a decade ago and I think another recent couple that gave birth to White children (not "albino"...White kids).

I think one of the kids in the photo above is "albino" (BS explanation for "we can't believe our eyes"...). One of the other parents gave birth to a blue eyed blonde kid, however.

It happens because there is only one race.

We don't see this in the United States (parents going on TV or to newspapers) because of the stigma surrounding it here.

 

Interesting but I'd like to see something that is a better example..though I'm not sure how possible it is.

Imagine Heidi Klum and Seal giving birth to twins...one boy and one girl...the boy looks like Lil' Wayne (same color and all) while the girl looks like Carrie Underwood or Taylor Swift.

 

Aren't these Kids not all albinos?

 

Those kids are albinos.

 

yeah..thanks Dex, thought so..poster puzzled me when he said just one was albino..

 

I don't know for sure if the other two are albino, Dex. You can make a guess that they are...but, I'm a lot more color blind than most when it comes to people.

However, there are clear cut examples of "Black" couples giving birth to "White" children...and I believe in your UK, there was a very recent example of a Black couple giving birth to a single White child two years ago...but I live too far away to find it.

It shows that we get all caught up in believing that there is a BIOLOGICAL difference between Blacks and Whites.

There never was.

 

I'm not knocking you at all dude. I did hear about that a while back. And of course, you're correct that there are NO differences between "races". The differences in appearances come from hundreds of thousands of years of adapting to different climates

 

Dex, I meant the message for Swazi. My bad.

Lesson learned: Post carefully after drinking enough New Years Eve Becks beer to kill Gary Coleman (who I think is the pic he chose for the site).

Sorry, dude. I even said something referencing the UK in my message...you live in Ohio.

Swazi, not knocking you either. Was just making a point.

 

Point taken

 

How come this only happens in the U.k?

this ever happen int he U.S?