They were born with the same parents just minutes apart, but these gorgeous twins are anything but identical.
Like most mothers of twins, Jennene Salifu believes each of her girls is unique in her own special way. But the Brisbane mum’s eight-month-old bubs, Aaliyah and Malikah, truly are one – or should that be two – in a million. While Aaliyah is black like her dad Ibrahim, who was born in the West African country of Ghana, Malikah is white, as is her mum.
Jennene, 32, admits she was stunned when she gave birth by caesarean section to fraternal twins with different skin colours. “I never thought in a million years that it would happen to me,” she marvels. “When I found out I was pregnant with the twins, I thought, ‘Here we go!’ My mum is a twin and my husband’s father is a twin, so it wasn’t a huge shock. But I never thought of a possible colour difference.”
With Jennene and Ibrahim’s older children – son Montel, 12, and daughter Ayisha, 6 – both having dark skin, the couple assumed their twins would follow suit. “We obviously had no idea of their colour during the pregnancy,” Jennene says. “One person mentioned in passing that we may end up having one black and one white baby, but I just thought, ‘No, that’s really rare.’
I looked it up on Google and saw that the odds of having a black and a white twin are one in a million. “My husband is so dark, you would never expect him to produce a white baby,” she laughs. “People look at him holding Malikah and they look again. She’s so white it looks like he’s holding someone else’s baby! But she does look like Ibrahim – only with my colouring.”
Read more of this families incredible story in this week’s Woman’s Day on sale Monday May 14, 2012.
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