Side by side (sorta)

People keep asking us if we know if Carolyn and Elizabeth are identical twins. Nope, we don’t know. There are several things one might look for that would rule OUT identical twins (different gender, different blood type, etc), and our girls match on all those things — but this only means that they MIGHT be identical twins, or they might not be. Also (if I understand correctly), if the girls had shared a single amniotic sac, that would have meant they definitely WERE identical twins — but our girls had separate sacs, which again means they might or might not be identical. DNA testing could tell us for sure, but that would cost a lot of money and I don’t think we need to know THAT bad. Short of that, there’s really no way for us to tell, except to just wait and see how they develop.

Janet and I were talking recently about how we’ve never really had the opportunity to see both of the girls together at the same time and really compare their features. So yesterday when we visited them at the hospital, I tried to get a good picture of each of them with similar poses, so we could try a comparison. I had to horizontally flip Elizabeth’s picture so the pose would match, and then I rotated both images 90° counterclockwise for easier facial feature recognition. Here’s what I got:

Yikes! They do look quite similar, don’t they?

If I had put the same name beneath each picture, would anyone suspect that these are different babies? For that matter, I think that I myself would be fooled if someone else had taken the photos and labeled them. Or if there simply were no labels, I don’t think I could tell them apart… At least, not from what I’ve seen so far.

Of course, this is by no means conclusive. Even fraternal twins can look very similar, and it’s possible that as they grow they will start to look less and less alike. But for now, I can’t help but wonder at how we’ll manage to tell them apart after they come home with us. Different color nail polish, I suppose.