I hadn’t even gotten a glimpse of the twins when they were removed from my womb and taken to the neonatal intensive care unit. The next day, their mom paid me a 10-minute visit and showed me a picture on her cellphone.

“Wow! They look different,” I told her, before she snatched back the device.

Little did I know that I’d hit the nail on the head. Not only were Mike and Max not identical — they had completely different DNA from one another. Mike appeared to be an Asian child, and was Liu and her husband’s biological baby. But Max, half-white and half African-American, belonged to me and my now-husband, Wardell Jasper, 34, who works for a cable company.