In April of last year, the twins Kalani and Jarani were born in Quincy, Illinois (United States) that left everyone surprised to have different skin color. They soon became famous and fall in love with social networks for their charming rarity.
Have fulfilled his first year of life, and to celebrate it the photographer Maria-Kathryn Nourse of Elite Photography has made a lovely photo shoot like rainbow babies, since they were born two years after the death of their brother.
Kalani and Jarani are daughters of an interracial couple. Kalani inherited her mother's light complexion, Whitney Meyer, while her sister, Jarani, acquired her darker complexion from her father, Tomas Dean.
The girls have an older brother from another father and were born two years after Pravyn, the couple's first child, died drowned with two years in the nursery pool.
They came to return hope to the family after the devastating loss, therefore they are known as rainbow babies, those that arrive after a miscarriage, fetal death, neonatal or infant death. That's why in the photo we can see them with a multicolored flower crown.
How is it possible?
It is what is known as biviteline or bicigotic twins, (the pregnancies of more than one baby are scientifically known as twin pregnancies) that are conceived through a double ovulation of the mother.
The two ovules have been fertilized by two sperm in the same cycle, therefore the gestation time is the same and the babies share the maternal uterus, although they do not share amniotic bag, and most importantly: they have different genetic load. Children may or may not be the same sex. They are what we know as twins.
And how can a baby of color and another white be born? It happens when both parents have white and colored genes in their DNA. Each ovule and each sperm has a different genetic load and each one can give rise to combinations that make some features or others manifest. Fortuitously, in the cases of twins of different skin color, an egg and a sperm have been linked with white genes and others with color genes.
