The new US womb twin blog

The US blog just took a giant leap forward! Take a look here.

This is what Sylvia had to say today: ( I couldn't have put it better myself!)

Acknowledgment of the plight of the wombtwin survivor is in great need - both in society and in wombtwin survivors themselves.

Awareness of this condition becomes a clear explanation to what didn't make sense before. It is also extremely disproportionate to the pain suffered by those who lost someone with whom they once shared a womb. They need not suffer alone just because society hasn't yet established proper recognition and understanding of this syndrome. Battling such a vague condition all alone is especially difficult when being alone is the problem to begin with!

We must be the salmon swimming upstream in a world of nonbeliever singletons.

Rather than also looking the other way to this growing house of mirrors, we must recognize and respond to an impending epidemic. An ever increasing occurrence of twins & multiples is due to artificial interventions (like in vitro) and natural egg splitting due to egg ripeness as women wait later in their lives to conceive.

Wombtwin survivors are all around us and they are playing out their dream of the womb everyday... Some know it and can't help themselves, some know it and are helping, but most survivors have no idea.

I do hope they get lots of hits and followers.  If you are in the USA and not following or commenting yet,  please visit the blog and get involved!

Someone said to me yesterday that this project was too much of "a one-woman band."  It certainly was to begin with, in April 2007 when I was all alone with my Unltd grant and a new company to create,  but today we have members all over the world and I have two new directors - since yesterday- and a growing list of voluteer helpers.

Apart from the fact that I can't possibly cater for the needs of the 600 million womb twin survivors  in the world all by myself,  I did once have a life. That seems a long time ago now.   I suppose if the company and the project can grow big enough to stand alone, one day I will be able to retire and write that novel about St Alban......

I spent yesterday morning in an initial briefing with my personal Unltd mentor, Amy. This is such an excellent way to make use of public money - I say this not because some of it is coming my way, but because you get so much more than cash. You get legal and financial help and support; you get use of their offices for events; training in all kinds of skills; a chance to get to know other award winners. Making that application for an Unltd grant has proven to be one of the most rewarding things so far in this project, most of which has been fraught with difficulties and extremely isolating. So now I have friends and supporters and someone to turn to when all that positive energy drains away and I feel I can't do any more.

Then I spent the afternoon in the company of a TV producer, prospecting for a possible documentary on the survivors of abortion. I had pointed out that any fetus that survives an abortion attempt and is born reasonably intact is likely to have once been a fraternal twin. On that basis we had a session on the whole project:- twinning; my own story of the abortion attempt that killed my brother; abortion and how its done; the possible effects on the resultant child; the potentials for developing specific therapy and support for the survivor; funerals and rituals of mourning as part of the healing.

It will be many months before they begin to make this film. I do hope I can be in it. I also hope they dont forget to include "muli-fetal pregnancy reduction" which was once called "selective foetocide" but that was a bit too near the bone, so its now MFPR. It's abortion by another name, but this time it is intended that there will be at least one survivor, so that seems to be OK. That's when during IVF they get too many embryos developing and they kill several of the fetuses at about 10-12 weeks or so to reduce the number to twins or triplets.

Website giving advice to parents on MFPR

They worry about the effect on the parents, which is a start, but no one thinks about the survivors. That is, with the exception of Elizabeth Bryan, who highlighted this many years ago.

An interesting, if exhausting day......