Photo: Getty Images
Many children wind up having their parents drop some kind of bombshell on them. Sometimes it's when kids are younger, while on other occasions, mothers and fathers will wait until they feel their children are mature enough to handle some kind of shocking news. The epic revelation could be about a divorce or a confession that the child is adopted, but the news Anna Hipkin's parents delivered to her left her as surprised as she was confused.
In a video originally on TikTok, 19-year-old Anna explained how she was told that her brother is actually her twin. It doesn't seem like too earth-shattering an announcement, but it turns really strange when you learn that her sibling is five years younger. Anna wrote on her video, "When you casually get told over lunch by your divorced parents that your 13-year-old brother is actually your twin, but you're 19."
Commenters were just as confused as Anna on how that could be, but understood better after she posted a second video explaining how it is all true. She described that her parents conceived both her and her brother through IVF in the same round of treatment, but rather than be pregnant with twins, Anna's parents decided to just have one baby and freeze the other embryo. Anna stated, "Basically, we were both conceived in a dish, and then I was put back in my mom, and then my brother was put in the freezer for five years as an embryo."
She went on to say, "It got to five years of Jack being in the freezer and they were like, 'We'll defrost him.' Fair play to them. They defrosted him, put him back in my mum, and then nine months later, there you go. So there are five years between us, I'm 19 and he's 13, nearly 14. Obviously, we're not identical twins, but biologically, technically, we are twins."
Commenters disagreed, writing things like, "If you go by that logic, all siblings are twins as long as they have the same parents," and, "How is he your twin?! That's not how it works. He's not your twin!" and, "Huh? That doesn't make him your twin though. You have the same relationship as any other siblings. Twins are conceived and carried at the same time."
Others, however, told similar stories. One person wrote, "One of my friends is the same. Their parents did IVF and had my friend, and then had her twin 10 years later."
Adding more to the mystery, both of Anna's original videos have since been removed from TikTok.