How dizygotic twins develop in the womb : beautiful new artwork

On this page at the baby center, there is a series of pictures showing the development of dizygotic twins: This is the very start, at 3 weeks:

It is almost impossible to believe when you see these twins developing  that the twins do not have some kind of vague awareness of  each other.

I have found that dizygotic twins seem to recover and heal faster than monozygotic twins, but......

The fraternal womb twin survivor (6). A twin soul

Probably for want of another explanation, the idea of a twin soul - an important component of romantic love- has been associated with metaphysics and such things as karma, energy alignment and the Inner Child.

Yet there may be a more prosaic answer to why some people spend years searching for their twin soul. Of course they never manage to find him or her, and make and break a series of loving relationships in the course of their search, creating heartbreak again and again, as they continue.

What if the search for a twin soul in indeed the search for one's lost twin, who exists only in the survivor's Dream of the Womb and cannot therefore be found in born life? A lifelong, fruitless search for the unattainable twin relationship, accompanied by plenty of heartbreak, would be a pretty suitable way to reenact the Dream of the Womb where a fraternal twin was once out there somewhere but, after a brief interval, was gone.

Some of the poetry about twin souls mentions a place far away where the twin souls were once united - this sounds exactly  like the Dream of the Womb to me.

When we are apart, I lie awake at night
making love to the space between us
your fingertips are tracing my tongue
I draw you into my dreams
the sky folds around us
the stars feel like rain
and from so far away
you look like a tiny grain of sand
but you feel like the ocean
you remind me of the home I knew
before I knew I'd left it.

by Teri Robnett
www.thetenthmuse.com

We need  to take a closer look at the way we seek out other people for intimate twin/twin relationships. Many unaware womb twin survivors in the population are acting out their Dream of the Womb on each other in a cruel Dance of Death  that always ends in lonliness and heartbreak. Perhaps with a new understanding of the lost twin in the Dream of the Womb, we may be able to prevent the dysfunctional relationships created by womb twin survivors who seek out their lost twin in each other.

A fraternal womb twin survivor - co-dependency

There are various theories about why co-dependency develops in an individual, but none of them are clearer or more cogent than to say that co-dependent people are fraternal (dizygotic) womb twin survivors.. Over the next six days I will explain how co-dependent people are re-enacting their Dream of the Womb, wherein lies a little lost fraternal twin.

Here is one excellent example of how writers on this subject have got within a millimetre of diagnosing the problem according to the Womb Twin hypothesis but they didn't know about womb twin survivors, so they completely missed the point:

Love addictions come out of a neediness to be loved, which started when the young child was not loved and cared for in safe and supportive ways. Perhaps the baby was not wanted and picked up this message from the parents. Perhaps the child was criticized and scolded leaving her with a feeling of being flawed. Maybe she felt that she could never meet her parent's unrealistic expectations. Or decided that she was unworthy when she was rejected and abandoned by those she loved. All of these possibilities create insecurity and low self esteem in the child.

[What is the womb twin hypothesis? See here]

The codependent will try anything to help intimate relationships survive. [more]

Codependency is when a person has a strong desire to control people around them, including their spouse, children or co-workers. Codependents believe they are somehow more capable than others, who need their direction or suggestions to fulfill tasks they are responsible to complete. They feel compassion for people who may be hurting and feel they should be the one to help them. Codependent people give of their time, emotions, finances, and other resources. They have a very difficult time saying "no" to any requests made of them.

 Well, if the first bond ever created in your life, which was with your fraternal twin, was broken, would you as the sole survivor not be desperate to keep alive any intimate relationship you have in born life?

Nothing - not a full life nor an early death - would be more important than that. 

Chapter 24: Being a twin

I have always had a great interest in twins

A lifelong interest in twins was predictably very common among the respondents and was the second most popular statement among the respondents who were able to provide evidence of their twin.  An interest in twins can be expressed in all kinds of ways.  It may be simply a tendency to scan faces when among people, always noticing twins or people who look similar.  It may mean reading books about twins in general and focussing on lost twins in particular.  Womb twin survivors seem to take particular interest in anything to do with twinning and published in any medium.    

The fact that many hundreds of people carefully searched the Internet and found the Womb Twin web site, which was little-known at the time, suggests that they were very interested in twins and the death of a twin in particular.  Their emotional reaction to the material on the web site was sometimes overwhelming.  For these people, their reaction was proof enough that their feelings were related to the prenatal loss of their twin.

All my life I have had the feeling that I may have once been a twin
The use of ultrasound has revealed that in many “vanishing” twin pregnancies there are no symptoms at all.  If you were conceived before the 1980s when ultrasound scans were more regularly used, and if your mother had no symptoms during her pregnancy with you, then there would be no available evidence of your twin.  Until the mid 1990s, the incidence of “vanishing” pregnancies was either unknown or grossly underestimated, so there was nowhere for womb twin survivors to find confirmation of their deep conviction that they once had a twin.

In the absence of any physical evidence, there is no expert, however experienced and highly qualified, who can confirm that you are a womb twin survivor.  You will have to rely on your “gut instinct” and your intuition to work out whether or not there was a lost twin in your Dream of the Womb.

It may be that you have been given the idea of being a womb twin survivor recently by a therapist or friend.  If you are reading this book to find out whether or not you are a womb twin survivor, there is nothing here that will prove it to you, one way or the other.  After all, you are the world’s greatest expert on your experience of being yourself.  Never let anyone influence you, however persuasive their arguments may be.

Order your copy now and save. [here]

Chapter two: every twin is different

 Twins, not even identical ( monozygotic) twins, are not the same as each other.  We are all different and we all have a different life path.  Chapter two looks at twins and how they are made, with lots of diagrams to make it quite clear. The prebirth memory - the Dream of the Womb - is remarkably precise so these biological details are crucial to womb twin survivors so they can understand why they feel as they do.  It makes a huge difference for example if you are the sole survivor of a fraternal twin pair rather than an identical twin pair.

Here is a bit more about fraternal twins and how they start off differently from each other and have a separate and different life path from then on.


Chapter two: The making of twins

The necessary support for a successful DZ (dizygotic) "fraternal" twin pregnancy

Any twin pregnancy is a risky and uncertain business, from conception to birth, for the human womb is designed to carry only one baby at a time. To guarantee the conception and birth of a pair of DZ twins, that particular menstrual cycle must be well able to support a twin pregnancy, and that is not always the case. Several criteria must be met if twins are to be conceived: it has to be the right time in the month for the womb to be receptive to sperm, so that plenty of sperm can reach both of the
eggs, and there must be enough mucus for the transport of two eggs down the Fallopian tube. There must be at least two viable eggs, capable of being fertilized by the partner’s sperm. There must be enough sperm released around the time of ovulation, within a window of six days, so that one sperm can successfully fertilize each of two eggs. The womb must be well-supplied with blood vessels so that both of the fertilized eggs can implant successfully in the uterine wall. Even then, this is not the end of the story: if we are to see a DZ twin birth, both embryos must survive for long enough to be born alive.

Each twin has a different journey

The twin zygotes are individuals from the very start. They have different genes. Each zygote makes a separate journey as they both develop into blastocysts. The two blastocysts may travel close together or far apart. They might be in the same Fallopian tube or in separate tubes. As each one reaches the womb and the process of implantation begins, then one tiny trophoblast may embed in a more advantageous position than the other. Even if they both come to rest on a good site on the womb wall, one twin may manage to implant more successfully than the other. After implantation, one twin may develop faster than the other. The two placentas may develop on opposite sides of the womb wall, away from each other, or close together and side by side. If the two placentas develop very close together, they tend to fuse together into one placental mass. It has been known for DZ twins to both develop enclosed by a single shared chorion. Monochorionic DZ twins are extremely rare in natural conceptions, but after IVF or hyper-ovulation drugs have been used, an increasing number of cases are being found.

For more, see here

10 weeks! Twins reacting to each other in the womb!

At 65 days of gestation, twins can be observed interacting.   That's  9-10 weeks.

Beautiful coloured photo image link here  of 65 day foetus in the sac.

"Twin pregnancies provide us with the opportunity to observe first reactions towards touch in utero, and this study illustrates the onset and development of these contacts. Forty women with twin pregnancies volunteered to take part in this study.

Between 8 and 12 weeks' gestation, ultrasound examinations were performed transvaginally, and from 13 weeks onwards transabdominally, at weekly intervals. 

Primary contacts followed an action-reaction model, and usually lasted < 3 s. These contacts were initially slow and then became fast. 

The first reactions of the co-twin towards touch were observed at 65 postmenstrual days. Contacts of longer duration between both bodies including extremities, or contacts initiated by sucking movements towards the co-twin were defined as complex contacts and were observed from 85 and 92 post-menstrual days, respectively. 

Nearly all contacts occurred significantly earlier in monochorionic compared to dichorionic twins. Female/female pairs seemed to develop complex body contacts earlier than male/male pairs, but for the onset of other contacts we have not yet found significant differences between gender combinations."

Here is the article

Wonderful.  We knew, didn't we? I  knew that I could remember my twin, somewhere nearby twitching around. I certainly knew when he wasn't there any more.....

BUT this article was published FIFTEEN YEARS ago. Who talks about this? We should be shouting it to the world!

The time is NOW !!! If you are reading this, please spread the word......

Twin research - new article on the wombtwin survivors site

Twins are unusual. They are interesting because they are so rare. They have always been a favourite subject of myths, folk tales and drama. Identical twins in particular are objects of great fascination and their similarity has caused us to ponder the deepest questions about the nature of human identity. (1) Few people are indifferent to witnessing the birth of twins. The womb, which is clearly designed to carry one baby, manages to carries two, and they are both born alive. Of course the twins we see are always in pairs. They are often, if not always, together. They seem to be bonded by a connection that goes back to their time together in the womb. A lone twin is a sad sight, for in the public eye this person surely is no longer a twin, because twins come in twos, we all know that.


A short history of twins

The scientific study of twins and twinning, as far as we know, is relatively recent when compared to other branches of obstetrics. One of the first publications to consider in detail the biological nature of twinning in humans was published in 1883.(2) It was written by Francis Galton, who was one of those remarkable nineteenth century English thinkers who laid the basis for almost all the later theories on twinning - that is, until the development of ultrasound and artificial methods of reproduction a hundred years later. He gathered his material by “sending circulars of inquiry to persons who were either twins themselves or near relations of twins.” He wanted to discover if the obvious similarity between twins was due to “trifling accidental circumstances” or something much more profound and as yet unnoticed and un-remarked.

Galton was aware from animal studies that twins arise out of two very different events. One is where two or more are born, each developing from a separate ovum. The other is caused by the development of “two germinal spots” in the same ovum, each of which becomes baby. Galton noticed that if the ovum divides, the twins are wrapped in the same membrane – the chorion - and invariably of the same sex. He was puzzled that all twins were not alike, and that boy/girl twins in particular were never alike. He also noticed the phenomenon of the Alpa and Beta twin in many twin pairs but, lacking our modern vocabulary, he described them thus:

The one was the more vigorous, fearless, energetic; the other was gentle, clinging, and timid; or the one was more ardent, the other more calm and placid; or again, the one was the more independent, original, and selfcontained; the other the more generous, hasty, and vivacious. In short, the difference was that of intensity or energy in one or other of its protean forms; it did not extend more deeply into the structure of the characters. (3)


Galton was the first to name the Nature - Nurture debate as such, and saw that twins who were very alike in their youth “…continue their lives, keeping time like two watches, hardly to be thrown out of accord except by some physical jar.” It was clear to Galton and others at that time, following the publication in 1858 of Darwin’s Origin of Species, that these twins had similar genes. The science of genetics - and its dark twin eugenics - was developing rapidly......[more]

Carl Jungs lost twin sister in the Red Book

Carl Jung sat in his study it seems, and induced a kind of waking dream in which he explored his deepest unconscious. He wrote the whole thing down as a personal illustrated journal in a red leather-bound volume - hence the name.

The New York Times reported this today. It seems that during his inner journey

Jung travels the land of the dead, falls in love with a woman he later realizes is his sister, gets squeezed by a giant serpent and, in one terrifying moment, eats the liver of a little child. (“I swallow with desperate efforts— it is impossible — once again and once again — I almost faint — it is done.”) At one point, even the devil criticizes Jung as hateful.

I wonder how long it will take for the Jungians to realise that this is all a pre-birth memory and includes a lost twin sister?

The snake may be the umbilical cord and the liver is the placenta, all that remains of an identical twin perhaps?

Interesting.

Wolfgang Priklopil- wombtwin survivor?

On reading an article about Natascha Kampusch, it struck me that I may have some useful ideas about Wolfgang Priklopil. This story sounded oddly familiar.

The mystery of why Natascha Kampusch was held captive for more than eight years in a cellar owned by Wolfgang Priklopil will never be fully solved, since within hours of Natascha's dramatic escape on August 23d 2006, Priklopil threw himself under a train, was decapitated and died.

I believe the idea is worth exploring that Priklopil was a wombtwin survivor. In keeping a young girl close to him, in the cellar of his house, he may have been re-living his Dream of the Womb. Natasha could have been his lost twin, restored to him and held close in secret.

In my new anthology of wombtwin survivor stories, due to be published on 30th June 2008 under the title "A Silent Cry," survivors of an opposite-sex fraternal twin pregnancy have described how they have sought after their lost twin sibling in other opposite-sex relationships.

The "Dream of the Womb" is a jumbled and incoherent complex of vague pre-birth memories, which are re-enacted constantly until fully interpreted and understood. Wombtwin survivors can become over-dependent on their "surrogate twin" - be this a parent, friend, spouse, partner or indeed captive.

In the case of Priklopil and his captive, is there any evidence that this may be true? Is it possible that the eight-year drama, lived out in a tiny cellar, was a re-enactment of Priklopil's Dream of the Womb?

Firstly, they are remarkably alike, and despite the age difference, they could pass for fraternal twins.Secondly, Priklopil had a difficult but highly-dependent relationship with both his mother and Natascha. This paradoxical kind of relationship - " I hate you - don't leave me" - is common among wombtwin survivors.

Thirdly, he had no other women except Natasha and his mother in his life - this is a sign that the fantasy world in which he lived was more important than any adult sexual relationship. Once Natasha got to be an adult at 18, it all changed. Natasha herself has said that it seemed as if "her master" didn't not want to "leave the womb" and be adult himself.

But Natascha did want to leave: truly born again, she is now fully in the world and taking it by storm, by all accounts. The man who was once her " Master" (was he the Alpha twin to her Beta twin in their secret, shared fantasy world?) is now revealed for who he truly was: a weak, anxious perfectionist, totally dependent on his captive little girl, whom he abused terribly and yet could not live without.

If this is a correct interpretation, then in Priklopil's Dream of the womb is his tiny Beta female twin who did not manage to survive. In the womb, he - the larger, stronger Alpha twin - dominated over his little sister, took away her space, her oxygen and her nourishment until she just faded away and died. There are strong echoes here of a dark cellar in Austria.

Tragically, there is a strange kind of redemptive justice in the end of this tragic story, for he, who was once the dominant one, is now cast aside and dead, while she, the once-submissive captive, is now triumphant and very much alive.

References

Hayton A (Ed) "A silent cry: wombtwin survivors tell their stories", Wren Publications 2008 (to be published June 30th)

Boklage CE. (1995) "Frequency and survival probability of natural twin conceptions." In Keith LG, Papiernik E, Keith DM, Luke B (Eds.). "Multiple Pregnancy: Epidemiology, Gestation & Perinatal Outcome" (Parthenon Publishers, New York) pp. 41–50.