A multiple womb twin survivor tells her story

In this movie a multiple womb twin survivor speaks honestly about her close connection to her lost twin brothers.

Her main problem is survivor guilt - that is so true of so many womb twin survivors. The Healing path is a way to transform survivor guilt into survivor gift.

It can be done. Believe me.

Multiples: a pair of identical twins who were once multiples

When we see  a pair of identical twins, what are we seeing? Are they truly the result of a single zygote splitting into two?  Or did that zygote split again once, creating triplets, or twice, creating quads?  Its a varied and confusing picture  when you start to think of additional splits. This image shows how triplets can be formed - 3 single zygotes, one single zygote and an MZ pair and a single zygote that splits twice.

When one zygote splits twice but two of the tiny embryos die, the resultant twin pair will share the same genes, as monozygotic twins all do, but they will both be womb twin survivors.

And then there is the question of the timing of the various splits - it's all crucial to the outcome......

4-D ultrasound of triplets crammed into a tiny space at 23 weeks old

Its not easy being a multiple!  There is a common misapprehension that fetuses in the womb cannot possibly be aware of each other....... hard to believe, when you see images like this, with three fetuses wrapped around each other!



But what if one of these triplets died? The two survivors would inherit more space, more nourishment and would be in a better state at birth, possibly born a little later and better developed than if there had been only two.  This is why "multi fetal pregnancy reduction" ( ie the abortion of one triplet to reduce the number to twins) is considered as a good idea, even a responsible action, by the doctors involved.

All the medical evidence says that babies do better as singletons than as twins, or as twins rather than as triplets. All the medical evidence is quite clear on this subject. No one thinks of the psychological effect.

The two surviving triplets, born as "fraternal twins", would be treated as twins all their lives, but they would both know, deep inside, that there should have been three. One day they will start wondering, even asking, about the other one.

What will the parents say then, I wonder?

There is a fully-referenced section on Multi-Fetal Pregnancy Reduction in my new book.

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.

Multifetal pregnancy reduction: what about the survivors?

I read this today:

Assisted reproductive technology (ART) and fertility drugs have greatly increased the number of multiple pregnancies in America.  The goal of MFPR is to increase the chance of a successful, healthy pregnancy. Multifetal pregnancy reduction:

• Is usually done early in a pregnancy, between the 9th and 12th weeks
• Is most often performed when there are four or more fetuses present.
• Can be used to reduce triplets to twins. This practice makes the fetuses' chances of a healthy outcome the same as that of the average twin pregnancy.
• Is known as "selective termination" when it involves a fetus with severe defects or one that is expected to die later in the pregnancy, which would threaten the life of the surviving fetus or fetuses. A multifetal pregnancy reduction improves your chances of avoiding miscarriage, carrying your pregnancy longer, and delivering one or more healthy babies.. Read more here

My thoughts: 
The loss of a triplet doesn't create a pair of twins. It leaves a pair of triplet survivors.
MFPR is a terrible decision for parents to make.


More...... 
Medical staff try to persuade women to go for single embryo transfer in IVF so there are not so many multiple conceptions:


The decision to reduce one or more fetuses is extremely complicated, and numerous factors must be considered, since the procedure has risks, such as loss of the entire pregnancy or preterm labor and birth of the remaining fetuses. In addition, there are also psychological risks for the mother. Typically women faced with this decision have struggled for years with infertility and now they are asked to consider terminating one or more of the fetuses to prevent morbidity and/or mortality in others. Nurses who work with infertile women may be able to assist in minimizing the need for multifetal pregnancy reduction by educating women about the risks associated with assisted reproductive technologies and higher order multifetal pregnancy before decisions are made about multiple embryo transfers or intrauterine insemination after ovulation induction. more......


I'm glad they are considering the psychological risks for the mother, but what about the effect on the survivors?  There are plenty of little womb triplet or quadruplet survivors toddling about now, who will probably never be told that their parents decided to "reduce" their brothers and sisters.
I hope that this work with womb twin survivors will provide the insights that the psychologists will need in a few years time to help these kids.

Three groups of womb twin survivors

There are, I have found, various sub-groups of womb twin survivors. Right at the start, I found three distinct groups,  (I called them M type, C type and D type for want of a better term)  and despite all kinds of analysis, six different lists of questions and examining over a thousand stories, those three groups are persistent, so there must be something in this, mainly because I did not expect it, so I know Im not making it up.

I have reached a tentative conclusion about this, and  so I have made up some user-friendly names for these groups (No one likes to be categorised as a "type" that is so impersonal!)

GEMMY - they were once a fraternal (dizygotic) twin   (After Castor and Pollux, Gemini twins)

CHIRO - sole survivors of a triplet set where two of the triplets were monozygotic twins  (After Chiron, or Kyron or Cheiron, depending on where you look)

MIMI - they were once  a monozygotic (identical) twin  (Two individuals in one, each of them a ME.)

At the very start of this in 2003 I quickly found GEMMY and CHIRO, but MIMI took a while longer and is only coming clear this year.

Now Charles Boklage suggests in his work ( he did some statistical work on the incidence of vanishing twin syndrome in 1990) that most of the twins lost before birth are probably monozygotic (and male, which is interesting: most womb twin survivors who come to me are female.)  That means therefore that there are far more MIMI survivors than there are GEMMY or CHIRO survivors. But my research has not uncovered them yet, for they have not come forward. I wonder why not?