The 24 week fetus can't feel pain?

 The 24 fetus can't feel pain, according to the RCOG

So they are off again, justifying abortion on the grounds that the little person who has to die doesn't feel pain.  That's like saying its OK to kill someone if you give them an anaesthetic first. That is a very strange moral outlook, that reminds me of the person who abuses drugs and says its OK because it "doesn't hurt anyone."   Just because something is pain free doesnt make it a good idea.

Its very difficult, working with womb twin survivors, to think about abortion at all.
There may be not be pain for the  fetus who dies, but  when one twin ts taken and the other is left, there is great pain for the survivor.

A few quotes to play with:

I have come to accept my parents' decision to not have more children. However learning at age 14 about the termination of my twin made sense of some extreme phobias eg blood, knives and sharp things.

A womb twin survivors story

This was sent to me anonymously very recently:

If this is your story or you have a similar story, please make contact.   I can help.

I am dyslexic. I had insomnia from being a baby and always felt different, alone, mute and like I shouldn’t be here...years before I knew I was a twin. A nursery nurse when I was four described me as ‘a very solemn little girl’. I first attempted suicide when I was eight and failing, told my mum I had done it because : ‘I shouldn’t be here. I don’t want to be here.’  I did whatever I could to please everyone as a child and the thought i had done anything wrong, upset or hurt anyone made me suicidal with despair. 


If I saw poverty or famine or war on TV I felt helpless and pointless. I self harmed throughout childhood because I felt constantly guilty and didn’t know why. I thought I was innately bad and everyone else was innately good.  I wanted to be good, to fit in, to belong, but I constantly felt not human, like I was pretending to be human, wearing a mask, which made me a fraud. 


As I got older the insomnia got so bad I wouldn’t sleep for days on end. I stopped even going to bed. Then I stopped eating. Then I stopped going to school. By the age of twelve I had left school and was smoking, drinking and began using drugs. By eighteen I was alcohol dependant and a heroin addict. I used to attempt suicide by staging ‘accidents’. 


All my life I’ve felt in limbo, neither a part of this world and not apart of any other. Then, after getting clean off heroin, getting two jobs, getting a first class degree and getting all sorts of awards in a matter of six months I just went to a bridge and tried to jump off it.  I was diagnosed with manic depression and said to have had a psychotic episode. 


I work.  I succeed at the things i do.  I feel love for people.  I don’t whinge or blame or hate.  I don’t remember ever feeling hate for anyone or anything.  I think life can be beautiful and this world too...but I just haven’t ever felt like I should be here.  Half of me isn’t even here and I felt that before I knew I was a twin. 


I don’t know whether my chronic loneliness, mute-ness and feeling like I shouldn’t be here is anything to do with having been a ‘Womb Twin Survivor’.   I’d never heard of it before or thought that might be why I don’t remember a time I didn’t feel like half of me is missing. Just my story.


More about the support I can offer here

John Lennon: womb twin survivor?

Skipping through the online biography of John Lennon I found a lifelong fear of abandonment :

And those traumas were considerable. Lennon's mother, Julia, drifted in and out of his life during his childhood in Liverpool - he was raised by Julia's sister Mimi and Mimi's husband, George - and then died in a car accident when Lennon was seventeen. His father was similarly absent, essentially walking out on the family when John was an infant. He disappeared for good when Lennon was five, only to return after his son had become famous as a member of the Beatles. Consequently, Lennon struggled with fears of abandonment his entire life. When he repeatedly cries, "Mama, don't go/Daddy come home," in "Mother," it's less a performance than a scarifying brand of therapeutic performance art. And in that regard, as well as many others, it revealed the influence of Yoko Ono, whom Lennon had married in 1969, leaving his first wife, Cynthia, and their son Julian in order to do so.  more......


Was John Lennon a womb twin survivor?  


He got into Primal therapy with Arthur Janov,  which lead to a lot of primal screaming and some good album tracks like MOTHER but  that doesn't seem to have brought him much in the way of healing. 

WombTwin survivor, anyone? Share your story with others...

On the Experience Project they have hundreds of stories and we have started a Womb Twin stories page here.

Maybe you could put your story there, it doesnt have to be very long.  You could start a discussion topic on the related forum - have a go, its easy!!

We have to seize every chance of getting the  idea out there.   There are far too many people who do NOT believe this for a moment and we have to put that right, so do your bit today and lets see 100 stories on that page as  soon as we can - got a moment?  Tell your story now!

Are YOU a womb twin survivor? Would YOU choose healing?

Please remember that there is another little version of you who didn't make it. Half of you is wanting to die and be elsewhere ( your lost twin) the other half wants to be alive and engaged with things here ( that's you) .

You are split, torn in two. You are two people, one feeding, one starving; one thriving, one fading.

You are fighting with yourself and you will of course resist your healing every step of the way. You will even fight me as I offer you healing. It's the way you are made, with two opposing sides. Because of that trait in your character, it will all have to be done in your own way and your own time.

But the choice now is: You could resist, create difficulties and blocks, and spend even longer in hell, or you could rise up and get a grip, just because you feel like it.

What is your choice: to be or not to be?

That indeed IS the question!

Risk for the survivors of "vanising twin" phenomenon

There are many risks for the survivors of a "vanishing twin" pregnancy, see here..

Research from the 2010 Annual European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE).

For instance, vaginal bleeding in the first trimester  ( sign of a lost twin) increased the risk of

• preeclampsia,
• premature or very premature delivery and
• more than doubled the risk of low birth weight and very low birth weight.
• These risks were further increased after detection of an intrauterine haematoma.

The survivor in a vanishing twin pregnancy (a twin pregnancy in which one twin miscarries very early in the pregnancy) was at increased risk of

• premature or very premature delivery,
• had double the risk of low birth weight,
• three times the risk of very low birth weight, and
• more than three times the risk of perinatal death.

 The researchers reviewed previously published studies and determined that early pregnancy complications increase the risk that the pregnancy will have complications and future pregnancies are at higher risk also.

And that is not to mention the psychological difficulties.......

The grief of the parent of a "vanishing twin" survivor

Two fraternal twins dance their twin bond into a beautiful and moving interaction. Not a dry eye in the house!

Watch it dry-eyed if you can!

Are you in a Black Hole today?

In a Black Hole?

Stuck in your beta energy?

Lost in despair? Just watch this.




When you fall down, what will you do? Are you going to finish strong?

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What should we call ourselves?

The debate begins again... in 2003 I argued with a lot of people  over how to find a short hand term for

"The sole survivors of a twin or multiple pregnancy."

What a mouthful! So I came up with the term "wombtwin"  to describe the twin who never made it to birth alive. Thus a "wombtwin survivor" was the twin who lived.

In 2009 I was advised to change the term into two words, Womb Twin, to make it clearer what it means. I took that advice. I like lots of advice and I need your advice today.

And now the debate comes again, and a public consultation has begun.  You will find a one- week poll at the top of the sidebar, please do vote and let's see what everyone thinks. If you voted " none of the above" then please give your personal suggestion as a comment to this post. Thanks!!!