Important post

Tributes to Althea Hayton

Althea Hayton, founder of Womb Twin, passed away peacefully on August 13 (sorry for the delay in posting this news on the blog). We are all ...

Showing posts with label siamese twins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label siamese twins. Show all posts

Saturday, May 14, 2011

What is a womb twin? (3) A conjoined pair of twins

Sometimes  a womb twin is a twin pair in one body,  joined together in some way.

There are many ways to be joined, and there are even babies born with two heads because  the  two bodies almost developed as one,  except for the head.  Here is a newspaper clip sent to me recently:

 If that is your story, that would make you a womb triplet survivor  -  generally known as a "multiple womb twin survivor. "

Here are some of the ways in which twins may be conjoined:























































The usual medical answer to such a pregnancy - a normally developing baby with a conjoined pair- would be a selective "reduction" procedure, where the abnormally developing twin pair would be given a fatal injection of potassium chloride.  The tiny twin pair would gradually disintegrate and disappear.   A single baby would be left to develop alone - a womb twin survivor.

Learn more about selective reduction here:

The result for the survivor would be a vague sense of Someone or Something nearby, that may have been moving and twitching quite randomly, and not necessarily in direct response, because the two babies would respond to their partner's movements before anything else, for their joined twin was the closest and any other fetus would be far away by comparison.  The conjoined pair would have been a familiar presence, quite ordinary and a natural part of the Way Things Are. That is, until they stopped responding and vanished.