Midwestern mother, 36, who was told she was infertile, has extremely rare ‘twiblings’ after miscarriage

An Illinois woman who was told she couldn’t have children has given birth to a rare “twibling” baby, just weeks before her surrogate.

Rachel Storch, 36, was left with severe scarring on her uterus after giving birth to her first child. After a subsequent miscarriage, doctors thought she had only a one in 100 chance of having another child.

To spare themselves this trauma, Mrs. Storch and her husband Michael decided to hire a surrogate mother in the summer of 2023.

But within a few weeks, Mrs. Storch discovered she was pregnant.

Babies Sydney and Remi were born this spring just 18 days apart. They are “twiblings”: two children born to the same parents, but carried by different people.

Ms Storch denied an amniotic fluid embolism, a rare and ‘extremely catastrophic’ complication that occurs when a foetus’s amniotic fluid enters the mother’s bloodstream, during Sydney’s birth

“They are only 18 days apart,” Mrs. Storch said TODAY.com“It’s funny that at this age we can already see what a difference a few weeks can make.”

Like normal siblings, twiblings are conceived using two embryos and sperm from the same two parents. Most twiblings are born via two different surrogate mothers, days to months apart.

It’s unclear how rare the circumstance is, though surrogacy itself accounts for about one in every 20 U.S. IVF cycles and 750 to 1,000 births a year. Experts estimate that twiblings account for a small percentage of that number, but there are no hard statistics.

Ms Storch sought help from a surrogate mother after complications during the birth of her first daughter, Olivia. Although the birth went smoothly in 2020, Ms Storch was rushed to hospital with “terrible cramps” that left her curled up on the floor and causing her to develop heavy blood clots.

Doctors performed two dilations and curettages (D&Cs), a procedure to remove excess tissue. A year later, tests showed that scar tissue covered about 70 percent of her uterus.

Although doctors were able to remove the tumor, the couple became pregnant and then miscarried a few weeks later, leaving them unsure if they could safely conceive again.

In August 2023, one of Ms. Storch’s viable embryos was transferred to a surrogate mother, but a week earlier she discovered she was also pregnant. “We just couldn’t believe it. We didn’t think it was real,” she said.

They waited 20 weeks before telling their surrogate, because doctors estimated the chances of Mrs. Storch’s pregnancy continuing were only one in 100.

However, the pregnancy proceeded normally and Mrs. Storch was due on April 27 and the surrogate mother on May 16.

But when labor was induced on April 22, Mrs. Storch suffered an amniotic fluid embolism, a rare and “extremely catastrophic” complication that occurs when a fetus’s amniotic fluid enters the mother’s bloodstream.

AFE occurs in only one in 40,000 births in the US and can lead to heart and lung failure because there is a lack of oxygen-rich blood in the mother’s bloodstream.

Dr. David Ouyang, a maternal fetal medicine specialist who worked in a room near Ms. Storch’s home, told TODAY.com: “When amniotic fluid enters the patient’s bloodstream, it essentially causes an overreaction of the immune system, similar to an allergic reaction.”

“The reaction causes two life-threatening events. First, the heart and lungs fail, and second, the body’s clotting system goes haywire, causing severe and persistent bleeding.”

In Mrs. Storch’s case, her heart stopped beating for 30 seconds due to cardiac arrest. Doctors also found seven liters of blood in her abdomen due to a cut in her liver.

According to Dr. Ouyang, there is no clear cause for the condition and it is so rare that “you are more likely to be struck by lightning twice.”

Sydney, meanwhile, was born completely healthy, along with her ‘twibling’ Remi. Sydney and Mrs Storch returned home on May 16th and the family picked up Remi three days later.

“It’s pretty surreal to be home,” Ms. Storch said. “I still have limitations. I’m exhausted, but I’ve recovered pretty quickly. Sometimes it’s hard to remember where we were a few weeks ago.”