David Cohen - Telling your daughter she is a womb twin survivor

I found this article by David Cohen in the Child Health section of the Telegraph: it shows how telling your child she is a twin will not upset her, but rather it will confirm something she already knew. This story is not unusual or strange,  it is being recreated in homes throughout the world.

My first daughter, Jessie, began life as a twin. We never knew she was a twin until six weeks into the pregnancy when my wife, Pamela, began bleeding and the twin was miscarried. The doctor who examined her called it a "blighted sac", a euphemism for a fertilised ovum that was defective or too weak to go the distance. Pamela was philosophical, relieved that the healthy foetus had survived, but for weeks I felt unexpectedly sad. Something had been lost, I felt, something no one wanted to acknowledge.

As the pregnancy developed, we seemed to forget about it, but then a strange thing happened: after Jessie was born, my wife said she kept on hearing another baby cry. She found herself searching for it and feeling, at feeding times, that she had to find and feed the other baby first.

The feeling was intense and it lasted six weeks - the exact amount of time that the twin had survived in her womb - but then it receded and we forgot about the lost twin again.

From the age of two - or to be more precise, from the age she could express herself verbally - Jessie yearned for a sibling, literally begged us for one. And when, two years later, we were ready to oblige, she surprised us by announcing that the new baby would be "her twin". We were convinced we were having a boy, but Jessie insisted it would be a girl, and when her sister duly arrived, she suggested we call her Kayla, a name that seemed to fit the gentleness of our new arrival.

Read more of this excellent article

Prenatal trauma - an imprint for life

In the Primal Pages web site, which is about primal psychotherapy, Leah McGoy wrote an article called "An imprint for life", which is all about prenatal trauma. The example she used was a little womb twin survivor who came to her for therapy  - but no one had realised until then what the problem was with him:

The Womb Twin Kids project - latest

So we held our first launch meeting last night, but there were  more of us than them : in fact there were none of them! We set out the room with a big display, using teddies for twin babies:

Womb twin kids (3) My parents got it exactly right!

As I have a house full of guests arriving soon to celebrate the wedding of Prince William to his lady love, Catherine Middleton, it is absolutely right to make a truly celebratory blog post today!

What could be better than an interview with Monica Hudson, who is the US Womb Twin rep.and who manages the USA womb twin blog,  with a womb twin survivor is well adjusted to the fact that he is a womb twin survivor - no Black Hole for him.

[Read the interview in full on the World wide Womb Twin blog.]

Here is a snippet for you,  plus my thoughts in relation to the Womb Twin Kids project.

______________________________________________________

As a follow up to Part 1 of this interview (posted on April 7), here concludes this very special interview with a womb twin survivor who lost his female twin at birth, and is quite fine with it. He is convinced he was spared traumatic affect due to his mother's early acknowledgment and constant communication about the loss of his twin.

Consider what he shares - about a subject never spoken about with people other than his mom - an early Mother's Day tribute to the incredible instincts his mother had not to repress the loss. Let this also be a tribute to the current & future mother's of womb twins to overcome their apprehension and fears and learn to talk about it with their children. When you handle it well, your child will too. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away, it makes it much worse.

What advice would you give parents of womb twin survivors on how to handle this well for their children?
I wouldn’t evade it or negate it, I’d definitely talk about it. It’s something that did happen.

How early would you bring it up?
I would talk about it from when you brought the baby home. I remember it was a pretty early memory that I was a twin and my mother was talking to me about it, by doing that she comforted me and that’s what you want to do.

Do you feel that if she told you later in life that it would’ve been shocking rather than always growing up with that knowledge?
Sure because you set a tone with a child in exposing it to any kind of information or knowledge. If you do it later, it could be more of a shock and less embraceable. You might have difficulties developing that knowledge.

Whereas if you get it earlier, it’s just integrated into who you are?
Yes and then you have more of a possibility of developing that knowledge and nurturing it into a positive manifestation.

For instance, my mother was a great artist and she chose not to teach me that when I was very young. She taught me when I was 9 or 10 and it was hard for me to assimilate that information and I was kind of upset because I wish she did teach me earlier. To use an example, prodigies like Mozart who are taught & exposed to information at a young age can assimilate that information much easier, you don’t have to think about it too much. You’re just doing it. It’s like walking and reading and talking.

How would you suggest the subject be brought up?
Just talk. There’s no right way or wrong way…but the wrong way is not doing anything about it all. If parents are fearful and apprehensive… look, a child only wants to share with you and other people, the more sharing and conversing is done, the more adulation and love is created. And the more love and adulation, the more intelligence is developed and the greater the perception. And that’s all that beings want is that camaraderie - all species, that is the first act of communication. Just going through the motions of eating and getting up in the morning, they emulate those things. So when you start talking about things, they’re going to emulate those things.

When you do it while they're young, as a parent to a child, you’re going to do it in a positive way for the most part because you’re enamored by this new being. You make it up as you go, there are no instructions on how to rear children even though there should be, but you know there are right ways and wrong ways of doing things and anything that is done in a positive, loving manner can’t be bad.

If you don’t know what you’re doing and you think you’re doing it wrong, it still can’t be bad because you figure it out as you go. And not only do you figure it out, the child figures it out, you help each other. It goes back & forth. It’s a given that the teacher learns more or just as much from the student. The master really learns from the student if he’s a good teacher. And that is a very high acknowledgment in a very sagely manner, it’s not easy to do and people who are masters and have acquired that sagely manner are aware of that. That’s what you want to manifest in and it can take a lifetime to learn to do that.

Or you can just do it…as your biological being tells you to do. And if you follow those things, sometimes you can learn a lot more than you knew you could.
___________________________________________________

A truly remarkable mother! Bless her!

( And thank you to Monica and her womb twin survivor friend.)

The Womb Twin Kids project is all about encouraging that loving openness between parents and young womb twin survivors.  I am building a special web site, available soon, but in the meantime there are a few pages here, including a contact form for parents of womb twin survivors who would like to help with this project by sharing their experiences.

How can you know if your child is a womb twin survivor?

Here is the list of characteristic signs commonly displayed by young womb twin survivors. This has been compiled from various studies and e-mail correspondence with womb twin survivors and their parents.

* My child is very sensitive to atmosphere
* My child does not like to sleep alone in the dark
* My child is unusually aware of how people are feeling
* My child has a rich, creative imagination
* My child talks a lot about death and dying
* My child loves animals and yearns for a pet
* My child is different from other children
* My child seems to have “been here before”
* My child has an imaginary friend
* My child is interested in spirituality
* My child often seems lost and alone
* My child is hypersensitive

Of course there may be ultrasound evidence. The little lost twins have often quite disappeared by 8 weeks or so, so its the assisted pregnancies that reveal the vanished twins more often, simply because they are so carefully monitored.

For example, on this pregnancy forum here:

Or when things get very confusing, because early ultrasounds are rarely clear  enough to work out what has happened

And that sense of being alone in the experience of losing one twin early in pregnancy.

No one thinks about the possible psychological consequences for the survivor, because the parents have to wait and watch the remaining baby grow and  see if all is well in the end.  Much later, by the age of two, it becomes clear that this baby is different in some way.  Then the parents visit the children's page on the web site and  we  begin discuss the issues.

Gradually, we are working together to find ways to help these children.  If you are the parent of a vanishing twin survivor, you may like to join in with our explorations.

My baby's womb twin died - should I worry?

This new information about womb twin survivors is  helping womb twin survivors to come to terms with their loss. " I always thought I was just weird", says Emma,  whose twin was lost in a miscarriage at 13 weeks of pregnancy. " I am so glad I found this website. Now I know I am quite normal. its a great feeling." 

However, there is a darker side to this story: as the psychological difficulties that womb twin survivors face are being more widely discussed, and all kinds of theories are being aired, some parents are beginning to worry. 

Anna wrote to me: "Simon, my 3 year old is a surviving twin. When the placenta came out the doctor found a dead identical twin.  I was recently told that there have been studies done that show some cases of the living child taking on the dead one's personality.  My son is like two people, one way one minute and completely different the next.  I want to know if this is something I need to worry about." 

Should parents worry if their child is a womb twin survivor?

It is now known from several studies that many surviving twins become distressed at some point in life, often in adolescence, but also some surviving twins are not at all distressed.  Researchers have yet to understand why this is. It seem that the loss of a fraternal twin is less traumatic than the loss of an identical twin. The deep bond between twins, forged in the womb is strongest between identical twins and the identical womb twin survivors do seem to be the most likely to be distressed by their pre-birth experience.

What can parents do for  womb twin survivors?

There is a lot that parents can do: research seems to indicate that if an individual knows for sure from the beginning that they once had a twin, that does became part of who they are. Then they understand their feelings better if they do get upset at any time. They can know they are responding perfectly normally to the genuine loss of their "other half".   A loving family and lots of encouragement and love seems to help a great deal, so in many cases a surviving twin will grow up with little more than a tendency to moodiness.

The loss of a twin, like any major event taking place during pregnancy, is worth keeping in mind as a potential effect (either positive and negative) on  your child's development as an individual.  The science of pre-birth psychology  is now well established and we can be sure that our time in the womb does much to shape our personality in born life.  Womb twin  survivors are a particularly interesting case in point.

        

Best practice for parents with a wombtwin survivor in the family 

• Tell your child about their twin and tell them early in life
• Keep  yourself well informed about the medical details of that particular pregnancy, so you will be able to answer questions as they arise, at various stages of your child's life.
• Keep informed about the potential psychological effects of pre-birth twin loss so you can notice any problems arising
• Make contact with other parents of womb twin survivors for mutual support and good information. 
• Create some kind of physical proof of your child's lost twin: a statue, soft toy or plant in the garden etc. as a focus for your child's feelings of sadness or loss, should any such feelings arise.
• Validate your own child's feelings in the face of public scepticism that womb twin survivors truly do feel a sense of something missing - however hard it is for you to believe that!
• Love, accept and encourage your child,  as you would any of your other children.
• The fact that wombtwin survivors are different can be celebrated as a special gift, for they are often very sensitive and empathetic.