A mother of newborn identical twins had a system to tell her babies apart, but it failed. Desperate to discover which child was which, she called the police for help.
“Tomorrow I have to go to the police to have my twins fingerprinted so they can tell me which one is which,” Sofia Rodríguez, 25, of Córdoba, Argentina, recently tweeted in Spanish. “I won the ‘Mother of the Year’ award.”
The mom tweeted pictures of her twins Valentin and Lorenzo as part of a thread. “In the photos they look different but it is because they come from different angles or the light gives them different, in person they are the same,” she explained.
“I never thought I would get them confused — Valentin always (wore) a blue ribbon, but when I realized that it was too small for him, I decided to cut it (off),” Rodríguez told Today of her failed system to keep track of the babies’ identities.
According to the mom, her kids got sick and she needed to change her children’s onesies that’s when she became flummoxed. “It was crazy,” she told the outlet.
On March 2, Rodriguez asked police to fingerprint her babies. Unfortunately, she said the prints “did not look very defined.”
“We took his prints but they don’t appear in the system,” she tweeted. “We still don’t know who is who.”
In the March 15 update, Rodriguez said that Argentina’s National Registry of Persons will identify the boys through fingerprints.
Rodriguez is not alone as twins are notoriously difficult to tell apart as newborns. Today spoke with a psychologist Dr. Joan A. Friedman, author of “Emotionally Healthy Twins.”
“Identical twins look much alike, especially at birth,” the doctor explained to the outlet. “Excluding a difference in weight, birthmarks or other obvious identifiers, it can be difficult to tell them apart,” especially when parents are anxious, worried, or lacking sleep.
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Friedman explained it gets much easier for parents of twins to tell them apart as they get older and their personalities become more defined, which she encourages parents to foster. Parents of identical twins should do all they can to celebrate individualism.
She did say she felt for Rodriguez. “She must feel anxious, confused, overwhelmed, and guilty,” Friedman said. “I hope this mom got some solace by reading that other parents often have the same problem.”
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