one of my obsessions

Through my whole pregnancy I was told I was having "identical twins." Then the girls were born and to my surpise looked nothing alike. Lillian looked like Brian and Joelle looked like me. I was too out of it in the hospital to remember to have the girls swabbed to test their DNA to see if the placenta had fused and see if they were actually fraternal. So at their 6 week check up I asked the neonatologist and she said if the placenta fused then it would just look like a normal placenta. She said that their blood type was the same and they weighed the exact same and were almost exactly the same length...they were "more than likely identical." I wanted a definite answer. So I have researched it online and obsessed over it for the past 4 months. Finally I remembered to ask the girls pediatrician about testing them and she discouraged me from that because of the cost. So she offered to send off for the Placenta Pathology report. I got the results today.....


The report says the placenta is a "twin diamniotic monochorionic placenta." This means diamniotic twins have two amniotic sacs. -Which the girls did. Monoamniotic(shared placenta) twins are always monozygotic which means IDENTICAL. With a few exceptions where the blastocysts fuse. Anyway ...after carefully reading the report over and over I realized it is worded in a way that does not confirm or deny that the placenta fused. SO I came to the conclusion which the doctor highlighted for me...Identical. Apparently the only real way to know is to have the DNA swab which I am not paying for(at this time...we are still paying for their birth). I also discovered after thorough research that Identical twins can look different. They do not always look alike because one of the twins can get different genes from each parent which is what happened in our case, also I have discovered that position in the womb can also influence them. So I am just going with everything everyone has said...they are Identical...BUT they look different. It happens.