What is a Twinplet? Everything You Need to Know

• When two best friends give birth within weeks of each other (one friend gives birth to twins, while the other has a single baby), they might call the babies twinplets.
• These best friends raise their babies like siblings, and if they’re extremely close, they may even live in the same house—with their partners, too.
• Unlike twins and triplets, the twinplets aren’t all blood-related, so they don’t look the same.

What are twinplets?

A twinplet is a trio of babies raised together by best friends. When two best friends give birth within weeks of each other, they might call their kids "twinplets"—one friend gives birth to twins, while the other has a single baby. Since twinplet parents are besties, they raise their children together like one big family. Twinplet parents might even live together if they’re extremely close friends, sharing one home with their partners and babies. Some twinplet parents plan to get pregnant at the same time so they can raise their kids together.

Are twinplets the same as triplets or twins?

Unlike triplets and twins, not all of the babies in a twinplet are blood-related. While two of the babies in a twinplet have the same parents, the other baby is born to different parents (thus, they don’t share the same DNA). Since two of the babies in a twinplet are twins, they can be identical or fraternal. If the twins in a twinplet are formed from the same egg, they’re identical. But if the twins in a twinplet are formed from two separate eggs, they’re fraternal.

Do twinplets look the same?

Two of the babies in a twinplet look the same, while one looks different. Although some twinplets look like they could be identical triplets, there’s usually one baby who looks different from the other two (because they have different parents). If the twins in a twinplet are identical, they share identical genes and look exactly the same—they have the same features, and they’re the same sex. If the twins in a twinplet are fraternal, they have different genes, which means they can look very different from each other—they might have different features or be the opposite sex.