DZ womb twin survivors - preoccupation with pregnancy and birth

DZ womb twin survivors of both sexes seem to be preoccupied with pregnancy and birth and also have strong feelings about it.  This includes pregnancy and birth issues, miscarriage, abortion, stillbirth, neonatal death, infant death and the death of a child of any age.  If a DZ womb  twin survivor finds out that he or she will never have a child, this becomes a particular focus for grief and loss. This appears to be a simple transference of the feelings of loss of the womb twin onto another baby.

The current president of the Association of Pre and Perinatal Psychology and health is a womb twin survivor, and many of the pregnancy and birth experts who I have had contact with during the last eight years of this project have also been womb twin survivors. I would go so far as to say that, if someone is very interested in life before birth, there is something going on in their minds about their own pre-birth experience.

My own preoccupation with the unborn, which started in 1977 and still continues, may be a good example of this (I am a DZ womb twin survivor.)
I always loved babies and absolutely loved being pregnant and having babies of my own,  In 1977, when my younger child was two, I started a play group in a local church hall.  One day a mother came up to me and told me about LIFE, ( a pro-life organisation with an active local group locally.) I was immediately hooked and started to get involved. I trained as a speaker and went into schools and was chairman of the local group for a while.  I talked about this night and day : it was more than a preoccupation!

Then one day I had a new idea: that if we encouraged Christian clergy to  hold special services for women who had miscarried their babies naturally, then women who had lost their own babies because of an abortion could also attend and find comfort - by then, my preoccupation had shifted to women who had consented to abortion procedures of various kinds, and the psychological effect they suffered because of this loss. I started a project called Not out of Mind, to help women after miscarriage and still birth by creating special prayers and liturgies for them. In 1998 A book of these prayers and special liturgies, called "Not out of Mind" was published in 1998.  So it was that I was being drawn towards the unborn child, closer and closer every year.

It was another 10 years before I learned of my twin in 2002. On that day, this whole "unborn child" obsession made absolute sense at last. The obsession is now gone, replaced by a daily dose of great excitement and gratitude, as this womb twin project continues to grow!