The pregnancy came as a shock for the couple but a much-needed one. Their relationship was failing. The last six years were taking their toll.
It should have been a happy moment. But for Angelo, his heart started to pound viciously. He looked at his wife lying on the ultrasound table. Nothing about this was normal and he was no fool.
Angelo met Katie in their last year of college. They dated for two years before tying the knot. They had been happily married for nine years and had two beautiful lively boys.
Taylor was 5 years old and Brandon was nine. They had been trying for 4 years to have another baby. Katie desperately wanted a girl – and it became a bit of an issue.
Angelo and Kaite lived in Orange County, California. They both had high-paying jobs and lived in a nice area. Life should have been great but it wasn’t.
For Angelo, having two boys was enough for him. Sure, he wanted to grow the family and have a baby girl but it wasn’t a big issue for him if they couldn’t. But for Katie, it was.
Katie had become distressed and anxious over the years. After four years of trying to conceive and failing, she knew something was wrong.
But when she went for a medical check-up, the doctor insisted everything looked fine. Angelo was reluctant to get checked at first but when he finally went, he told Katie that everything was fine with him too.
Another two years passed before Katie found out that she was finally pregnant. When she told Angelo, he was completely shocked. He didn’t think it would ever happen.
The pregnancy came as a big surprise for the couple but a much-needed one. Their relationship was dwindling. They were struggling to keep it together for the past six years.
Katie dealt with her pregnancy with extreme attention and precision. She followed every piece of advice and attended every doctor’s appointment without fault.
Her baby was now the most precious thing in her life that she needed to protect. It was all she hoped for half a decade. But her pregnancy wasn’t done with its surprises.
When Katie attended her recent appointment, the doctor looked a little worried. He told her to come back the following week to see a specialist. He wouldn’t tell her what was wrong.
She went home a nervous wreck. Angelo comforted her and demanded she let him go with her to the next one. She eagerly agreed. She didn’t like him booking time off work to go to a general routine check-up, but for this, she needed him there. Little did she know, she should have kept him far away.
Angelo waited anxiously for the doctor to explain what was happening. He propped Katie up on the bed, preparing her for the ultrasound. “It’d be better if I showed you, instead of telling you”.
With that, he turned on the screen and pointed at the screen. “There”, he said. Suddenly, Angelo realized something was seriously wrong.
“Do you see that tiny face? You’re having twins”, he happily said. “A boy and a girl”. Katie couldn’t believe it. She gasped loudly before bringing her hands up to her face and crying tears of immense joy.
But for Angelo, his whole world suddenly fell upside down. His heart pounded violently. He looked at Katie in shock and stormed out of the room.
As soon as Angelo recognized another face and the doctor told him there was not only one boy – which they had assumed, but a girl as well, he knew foul-play was involved.
What Katie didn’t know was that Angelo lied to her. When he went to that medical check-up two years ago, he was told that the likelihood of him becoming a father again was very low. And that he had a rare condition.
Angelo’s hard-hitting realization had dawned on him slowly at first, but as he stood looking at the ultrasound everything came crashing down. He replayed his life with Katie and looked at every detail with fresh eyes.
He remembered times when some her behavior, in retrospect, should have set off alarm bells. He felt sick. This could not be happening.
Had there been a scandal going on right under his own roof? If there had been, Angelo had been too blind to notice. After all, he worked late most nights, too.
He hadn’t batted an eyelid when Katie called him late one night from a hotel in London to tell him that her flight had been delayed. Angelo snorted in disgust. It was a “work trip,” she had said. But there were other details emerging that he hadn’t thought much of… until now.
In the general population, identical twin pregnancies occur 0.45 percent of the time, or 1 in 250 births. People who are twins tend to conceive twins. And it’s also a well-known fact that using fertility treatments increases the likelihood of having twins.
Had Katie realized that they were having fertility problems because of him and done something about it? After all, they had been trying for six years when Katie finally fell pregnant again. And then, there was his family’s curse.
Angelo always knew he could only have baby boys. It ran in his family. His father, his father’s father, and even his father before that had all only produced boys. From a scientific standpoint though, he was lucky that he already had two kids with his condition.
Angelo hadn’t told Katie the truth. He had been terrified that she’d end it and their family would be left broken. But those babies weren’t his. He began to shake.
When Angelo had gone to see the doctor two years prior, his world had come crashing down.
When the question of fertility came up, the doctor explained that he had an extremely low sperm count and that further tests would be need to be done to determine why. After hormone testing and a chromosome analysis, the results stunned even the doctor.
Now that Angelo had the results, everything started to make sense. In a follow-up appointment, the doctor explained that people with his extremely rare condition very rarely conceive children.
Angelo remembered his struggles as a child – he was always sick, anxious, and had difficulty concentrating in school. Now, he knew why. And he was slowly coming to grips with his disease at the worst time possible.
Angelo had Klinefelter syndrome – an extremely rare genetic disorder that meant he had an extra chromosome.
Humans have 46 chromosomes, including two sex chromosomes that determine their sex. Women have two X chromosomes (XX), and men have an X chromosome and a Y chromosome (XY). Angelo had one extra copy of the X chromosome, which meant he was XXY. But what did this mean for him?
Because Angelo was born with an extra copy of the genes on the X chromosome, the doctor was 99% sure that he couldn’t have any more children.
It had gone undiagnosed his whole life. In fact, it was a miracle that he had previously conceived not one, but two kids. So then, how was his wife now pregnant? He was livid.
When he found out that Katie was pregnant, he was shocked because he knew how unlikely it was. He assumed it was a boy but when he found out they were having twins – one being a girl, he knew for certain.
There was no way those babies were his. He kept his silence until the kids were born. Then he did something drastic.
As soon as the babies were born, he asked Katie to do a DNA test on the twins. Immediately, her face went pale. She quickly recovered and asked him if he was accusing her of something. But she couldn’t fool him.
Before the couple left the hospital with the twins, Angelo asked the doctor to do a DNA test. As a married parent sharing equal custody of his so-called twins, he had every right.
It took two weeks for the results to come back. During that time, Angelo told Katie that he was leaving her.
Katie was left stunned when he finally told her the truth about his test results from the medical check-up two years ago. He told her what the doctor told him. Katie stood frozen. Would she confess?
“Of course the twins are yours! no matter what the science says!” Katie said. Angelo was incredulous. He couldn’t believe that she was flat-out denying everything.
Okay, he thought. If Katie wanted to play hardball, he could play. He couldn’t be with a woman who had cheated on him, so he filed for a divorce.
Katie didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t believe what had happened. Now, they were living separately and preparing to go through with a divorce. That’s when the DNA results came back.
Just as Angelo suspected, the twins weren’t his. He confronted Katie, angrily demanding an explanation. Then, she finally cracked.
Katie admitted that she had been seeing another man throughout their marriage, and to add insult to injury, Angelo had even met him in passing.
The man worked with her and even travelled abroad with her for work meetings. So then, the chances that the two other “medical miracle” sons were actually his were almost zero. What could he do?
Angelo decided to seek out advice from a lawyer. After undergoing a battery of tests, it was confirmed that he was indeed incapable of fathering children. The next step was to obtain DNA samples from his other two sons.
Angelo believed that children define who you are. So, not only had he been diagnosed with a rare disease, but he now suspected that he didn’t actually have any children.