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Family - Multiple Pregnancy
The chances of having multiple babies in one pregnancy have risen following the development of IVF (in vitro fertilisation).
The most babies born at one birth was nine in Australia in 1991, although none of them survived. The largest number of multiples to have survived from one birth is believed to be seven.
Why Multiple Births Occur
There are two reasons why a woman will carry more than one baby in a pregnancy - more than one egg has been released and fertilised, resulting in fraternal twins, or a single egg has split into two, resulting in identical twins.
Sometimes one pregnancy can contain both fraternal and identical twins, perhaps if two eggs are released and fertilised and then one splits to form triplets, two of whom are identical.
Who has a multiple pregnancy?
The tendency for a woman to release more than one egg at a time can be inherited, age-related, race related, or build related. It can also be induced with hormones during IVF and many successful IVF pregnancies are multiples as up to three eggs are implanted at a time to increase the chances of one taking.
The tendency to have identical twins is believed to be completely random - there have been studies into whether identical twins may be an inherited tendency, but it appears to be consistent across the world population, which suggests not.