A mother who gave birth to one black and one albino twin has revealed her shock at first seeing them – and initially believed she had been brought the wrong baby.

Judith Nwokocha, 38, a Nigerian-born photographer from Calgary, was astonished when she first met her baby boy, Kamsi, who was black, and her little girl Kachi, who was later diagnosed with albinism.

She and her husband, who is also black, struggled for eight years before falling pregnant through IVF, and now find that people don’t believe the twins, now three, are theirs because of their different skin colours.

Yet the siblings ‘haven’t noticed anything different’, the doting parent claimed, and have a ‘great’ relationship.

Albinism is an inherited condition and if both parents carry the faulty gene, then there is a one in four chance that their child will be born with the condition, which affected Kachi, but not her twin brother.

There are no figures available for how many sets of twins are born where only one has albinism, although other cases have been reported in The Netherlands and Mozambique.

Other cases have been reported where twins are born of different races, but these figures refer to pregnancies of mixed race couples where the egg and sperm that fuse contain gene coding for one skin colour – and the chances are one in a million.

Overjoyed: The Nigerian-born mother, who is pictured when pregnant, struggled for eight years to get pregnant, before conceiving their twins with the help of IVF treatment

‘Most people don’t believe they’re twins,’ Judith said. ‘It’s also [Kachi’s] hair texture that confuses them. Someone has asked me, “Where are her parents?”.

‘I can see the look of shock in their faces when I tell them I’m her mother.’

Yet Judith insisted that she has never had any horrible comments about the twins’ different skin colour, explaining: ‘I haven’t had any negative reaction from anyone, they always tell me she is beautiful.’

Shortly after discovering she was pregnant, Judith was told the twins might be born with Down syndrome, with Kachi always behind her brother in terms of growth.

The siblings (pictured recently) ‘haven’t noticed anything different’, the doting parent claimed, and have a ‘great’ relationship

Judith insists she has never had any horrible comments about the twins’ different skin colour

Judith explained that people don’t believe the twins (pictured with their grandmother), who are now three, are hers

She said: ‘I remember going for my first scan when they told me, “You are having a baby”, and I said, “No, I’m having two.” I knew, without a doubt.

‘The second scan revealed we were having twins. I was told the twins might have Down Syndrome. At seven weeks, Kachi was always behind.’

‘She was very small, she stopped growing. I remember the doctors telling me she might not make it. I’m so grateful she did.’

Judith added: ‘She didn’t cry initially, so I was thinking, “What’s going to happen, how is she going to be?”‘

In a personal essay for Love What Matters, Judith explained that when the twins were born, ‘Kamsi came first at 9:44 p.m., and then Kachi at 9:45 p.m’, revealing that her daughter weighed just 3.5lbs – almost half the weight of her 6.1lb twin brother.

But the newborn girl’s weight was not the only thing that surprised her mother.