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Tributes to Althea Hayton

Althea Hayton, founder of Womb Twin, passed away peacefully on August 13 (sorry for the delay in posting this news on the blog). We are all ...

Saturday, May 14, 2011

What is a womb twin? (3) A conjoined pair of twins

Sometimes  a womb twin is a twin pair in one body,  joined together in some way.

There are many ways to be joined, and there are even babies born with two heads because  the  two bodies almost developed as one,  except for the head.  Here is a newspaper clip sent to me recently:

 If that is your story, that would make you a womb triplet survivor  -  generally known as a "multiple womb twin survivor. "

Here are some of the ways in which twins may be conjoined:























































The usual medical answer to such a pregnancy - a normally developing baby with a conjoined pair- would be a selective "reduction" procedure, where the abnormally developing twin pair would be given a fatal injection of potassium chloride.  The tiny twin pair would gradually disintegrate and disappear.   A single baby would be left to develop alone - a womb twin survivor.

Learn more about selective reduction here:

The result for the survivor would be a vague sense of Someone or Something nearby, that may have been moving and twitching quite randomly, and not necessarily in direct response, because the two babies would respond to their partner's movements before anything else, for their joined twin was the closest and any other fetus would be far away by comparison.  The conjoined pair would have been a familiar presence, quite ordinary and a natural part of the Way Things Are. That is, until they stopped responding and vanished.

5 comments:

  1. I'm somewhat sickened by medical professionals referring to conjoined twins as a 'baby born with two heads'. I mean, unless they can handle the fact it's two people combined together, what chance have we got of them accepting the idea of VTS? It's like they're stuck in the dark ages

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  2. Dark Ages indeed, but we are trying to shine some light into those dark places! Just keep on talking about this, and we will win in the end! Never forget that 90% of the population is not aware or does not understand.

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  3. What about if one of the cojoined twins dies and the other survives, how would the survivor feel and reenact her or his dream of the womb?

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  4. The only example I have of this is one person who emailed me to say she had a scar where her twin had been removed surgically and the scar was a perpetual reminder of her twin. In the case of a natural death rather than surgical removal, then I am sorry to say that both twins must die. In the case of the original Siamese twins, one died naturally and the other died shortly afterwards.

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  5. if they are separated before or imediatly after the death of one, AFTER birth one could still live if one died. if they shared an entire body or heart it would be very difficult if not impossible to save one.

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