Some of the 90% of the population who have no experience of twin loss claim to know that womb twin survivors "make it all up"; that they are seizing on this idea to "explain all their troubles away." Yet time and again I hear the same story. Here is an example.
More than half a century has passed since Mary Billingdon’s twin sister was stillborn. Here, Mary talks about the sister she always felt was missing from her life, and the heartache it has caused her.
Mary and her sister Rosemarie were delivered in April 1953 after their mother Elizabeth was rushed into hospital suffering from pre-eclampsia. All three lives were at stake and doctors battled to save mother and both children. They managed to save Elizabeth and deliver Mary safely, at just 3lb 7oz. But Rosemarie was stillborn and weighed a whole pound less than her sister.
Mary recalls: "Mum was 29 and we were to be her first babies. She never really got over losing Rosemarie. In those days, people didn’t like to talk about such things, it was out of sight, out of mind.
"But Mum always introduced me to people as ‘one of the twins’, it was as though she didn’t want to let her go.
"I missed my sister right from the beginning. While other children had imaginary friends, I had Rosemarie. I’d sit on the bus and if someone tried to sit on the seat I’d immediately say: ‘Don’t sit on my twin sister!’ Our nanna, who was with me, would be embarrassed, but I was adamant Rosemarie needed somewhere to sit," she said.
Mary said: "Right from an early age I felt something was missing from my life – it was as though there was a part of me missing that could never be replaced. Mum had never hidden from me that I should have had a twin sister and I grew up knowing about her from the start.
"The bond between twins starts early in the womb. We had shared a placenta and an amniotic sac, and after our birth I still felt there was a bond that would never be broken. I remember playing with twins at school, desperately wishing Rosemarie was still alive so we could all play together.
"I had close friends but I still felt lonely and longed for my twin. I chose twins as friends so I could see what it was really like – what it would have been like if she had been there too. I was envious of those twins, who had each other while I had to pretend," she added.
"As I grew older, guilt crept in – guilt that I had lived and Rosemarie hadn’t. While I was staying with my nanna once I asked why I had survived and not Rosemarie. She joked: ‘you were the greedy one, you were a whole pound heavier’, but I was just seven years old and I took her words literally and blamed myself.
"For years I carried that burden around, feeling guilty that I’d survived and not you. I tried to compensate by being over generous to people, anxious not to be seen as greedy.
"It wasn’t until mum died nine years later that I finally realised it wasn’t my fault. As she lay dying of bowel cancer we talked a lot about you. She reassured me that I wasn’t to blame.
"Every time I look in a mirror I think of her. We were identical twins and I think we would have led identical lives. I think she would have been a nurse, like me.
"I wonder if she’d have looked exactly like me, dressed alike. I remember when I was eighteen, mum and I were shopping when a man stopped us and admired my legs. Mum was horrified but I wondered what he would have thought if Rosemarie had been there too, in an identical skirt. We could have hit the catwalk as twin models," she laughed.
Shortly after her 18th birthday, Mary’s best friend Heather died in a car crash.
"I was devastated at losing Heather. Over the years I’d always tried to compensate for not having Rosemarie by having very close relationships with my friends. In a way they were substitutes for her, and I felt doubly devastated by Heather's death.
"My one regret is that I can only talk to Rosemarie in my head because I have no grave to sit beside. When she was buried in a tiny white coffin. The church decided to put her into a grave that was being dug for another body so that they didn’t need to dig a tiny hole.
"We never knew which one she was in. I have recently trained as a bereavement counsellor and it has finally helped me come to terms with her death. I am helping other people who have lost babies and twins and I feel I am putting my grief to good use.
"I am now at peace with my past and hope one day I will be reunited with my twin after a lifetime apart."
Womb twin survivors are not making it up. The twin bond was formed in the womb but broken by death and needs to be grieved normally, freely and publicly. But first we need to overcome this block that exists in some peoples minds, that this is nothing but a fantasy.
90% of the population have no experience and do not understand - how dare they claim to know anything about this! It makes me really angry.
