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Why Do So Many Celebs Give Birth to Twins?

Tue., Jan. 6, 2009 10:47 AM PST by Leslie Gornstein

SS/Flynet

Another day, another set of Hollywood twins are born. Is it just IVF, or is Hollywood an incredibly fertile place?
—Molly, Belmont, N.C.

The answer isn't simple. Yes, the celebrities sure are spawning; now it's Ugly Betty's Rebecca Romijn and husband Jerry O'Connell, who join Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez, Marcia Cross, Geena Davis and scads of others in producing a twofer.

It's only fair that gossip over fertility treatments would follow; all of those women were over 35—old biddies in this business—when they had the twins, including Romijn. (Twin-machine Angelina Jolie isn't quite up there yet, agewise.)

So, have they or haven't they gotten help in getting pregnant? Well...

According to doctors interviewed by this B!tch, at least some Hollywood twinnage probably got a boost from science. After all, a quarter of all women over 30 have reported some sort of trouble making a kid. By age 40, that number leaps to 50 percent. And fertility problems, natch, tend to lead to fertility treatments, if not adoption or just plain giving up.

And here's more: Multiple births occur naturally about 3 to 5 percent of the time, compared with a whopping 25 percent after fertility treatments.

But here's where it gets tricky: It is, technically, still possible to produce twins without any help at all, right up until menopause. There is also an increased chance of having twins naturally as you get older.

Finally, asking new moms about this stuff is, apparently, mean. So we're stuck with official quotes, rumors or nothing at all.

Cross, for example, was quoted in People magazine as saying that, yes, she did undergo fertility treatments. Roberts has been more ambiguous. And Lopez has said—also to People, the official magazine of star babies—that she conceived Max and Emme naturally.

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