Twin-Story

This is a painting done in words do describe what can't be described: the loss of a twin before birth.

Twin-Story

My name is Gina and I am a twin. My brother died when we were born.

I know it sounds crazy and when I try to tell this to people, especially professionals, I can see it in their eyes they think I need a good dose of psychotherapy. Well, maybe I do. It's not so bad when they blurt out right away „you're loony“ or „you're making it up“, but when they are like „you have a fair amount of projections going on“ or „is this how you try to deal with life's hardships“ I could kick their shins with a relish. Anyway, this is what I know.

I remember lying in an incubator and seeing my brother die. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, babies CAN'T remember lying in an incubator. It's not like I remember going shopping the day before yesterday and never finding that yellow jumper I wanted so badly. It's more like a picture that's saved somewhere in my brain, in a region words have no access to. I can see it all at once, in one piece, but when I try to describe it, things become blurry. I guess, this is what it must be like if you see something with your eyes and have no words to attach to it. So this is what hides behind the words I now have to use and hadn't at that time.

My incubator stood next to the door, opposite an opaque window. It had been pushed there because there was nothing really wrong with me that made an incubator necessary. I now think they just had it ready for the twin's birth and put me there to get their hands free.

They were all working on my brother. Nurses, doctors and midwives. Someone was sobbing. Our mother, I guess. I had been tucked into a blanket and a loose strand was tickling me. This was one of the sensations I feeled. The other one was my brother dying.

Yeah, yeah, yeah again, I KNOW it's not possible.

We were due to date and big for twins. Sixpounders, both of us. Mom did quite a job carrying us around. I had slipped out nice and easy and now everybody was waiting for Granny to appear.

My brother's name is Grant. Our parents have this fixation about the letter G. Since our last name is Galiano and my father's called George and my mother Gretchen, they thought never to change a winning letter and picket out names with G for both of us. Actually I am Grazia-Angelina and my brother is Grant Anthony. What a name! Sounds like a Roman Emperor. When I'm in a very flippant mood I think it's the reason he didn't stay around. He just couldn't face life with such a name.

Mom an Dad called us Gina and Granny even before our birth and afterwards they talked a lot about Granny and always called him that. Sounds like they talk about my grandmother. Makes it easier in public. For me, too. I can say „I love my Granny“ and nobody raises an eyebrow. Cute, isn't it? A young girl loving her grandmother AND wearing a golden bracelet with her name on it. But that's a different story.

Granny did appear some twenty minutes later, sure enough. He slipped out just like me, head first, perfect position – and he didn't start breathing.

They worked on him, worked their fingers raw. They injected substances into him. They tickeld him – or so I've been told later – and they cut his umbilical cord. They wouldn't do it nowadays, but back then they were sure it would make him breathe. He'd have to with the cord cut, he didn't get no oxygen anymore from our mother's body that way. They thought it would make him breathe but it didn't.

Mom told me, years and years later, when a baby is born lots of things happen in the little body. A hole in the heart that's supposed to be there till then, closes, the lung is sort of connected to the blood circuit and the blood starts running the other way round. When the baby breathes for the first time the lungs inflate and everything is fine. In Granny's case something went wrong and if you come to think about all the things happening within literally one breath's time it's a miracle it doesn't go wrong more often. Somehow Granny's lungs did not connect to the blood circuit, he COULDN'T breathe – and he didn't.

I had felt him all those months. You can't be anything closer than in the womb, you just can't. You snuggle up with a friend in one bed, you share a bath-tub we some veeery close friend, you crawl into one sleeping bag up on Everest in a very cold night, but you'll never be as close as in the womb. I could feel Granny's heart beating, could feel the life pulsating in him. He would kick me in the face or touch my bum with his fingers. The membrane between us – us being fraternal – did not prevent us from touching, not a bit. I would push him around and feel his legs entangle with mine. I could even feel him pee – don't you laugh – the liquid became a little bit warmer when he did. He felt all these things from me, too. There was our mother's slow, steady heartbeat and our small, fluttering ones, but I would never know which one was mine and which one was Granny's. I did not know where my body ended and his began. I do not know now.

I know I'm not supposed to remember all this. What you gonna do Mr. Shrink? Sue me?

I was lying in my incubator and I felt him slipping away. He was alive when he was born. Mom later, a very long time later, told me she could feel the life in him when he was born. She could feel his heart beating.

So could I. The double puls was still there, but while mine was quickening up and getting stronger, his was slowly faltering. Like a line getting thinner and thinner, like a thread of wool being worn finer and finer until it's no more than a gossamer thread. He was drifting away from me.

I didn't want that. I became stronger by the minute. With every heartbeat, every breath I took – I had no trouble breathing – I felt stronger and more able to hold on, to go on, to feel myself, to sense things, do things. Sensations loomed around me. Smell. Termperature. Noise. Life opened up around me and clutched at me, claiming me for its own. And Granny was slipping away from it all, away from life.

They cut his cord. Did I say that before? They wouldn't do it today. They cut his cord and then there was no way his blood could get the oxygen it needed, the oxygen it should get from breathing. They hustled and bustled and somebody shouted and somebody sobbed and nurses were running and getting things and putting things back and a doctor was in charge … and Granny just didn't heed them and went off on his own on a journey of his own and didn't take me with him.

That wasn't fair. I felt him die. It felt like falling. Like falling into a bottomless abyss. He fell and fell and I felt the falling while being held back by all this reality, the white walls, the humming and piping and clicking and ticking of instruments, people's voices, cool air rushing over me when somebody ran past my incubator. All these things held me back, tied me to life, while I felt my brother falling away. I can still feel him falling. I have never completely lost this feeling of falling into nothingness. Like when you step down a stair and you suddenly go two and you weren't counting on it and your body goes down two steps when your stomach only expected one. It's a sickening feeling and I don't like it. It isn't there all the time, now, but every other day I will suddenly experience it and then I'll remember: my brother is gone.

I was a fussy baby and a difficult toddler. I would sit by myself and talk to myself. I would scream at night for no reason. I screamed when Granny died, my mother told me. It was a high, piercing scream that made nurses rush to my side, but apparently I was fine. All the instruments said so.

It's at night that falling feeling gets strongest and then I scream. I don't know if I'm afraid of falling, too, or of my brother being gone. It's one and the same feeling.

My mother put a small, golden bracelet round my wrist when I was two. „Granny“ was engraved on it but she never told me, she just called it „my keepsake“, or „my precious“. People at kindergarden thought it was a present from my grandmother.

I was a nuisance at kindergarden. I would sit and look at the boys playing. Once a girl tried to approach me and make me play with her. Family legend has it I threw toys at her. At home I would tell how „Rory made a sand-castle“, „Josh pushed Ryan off the slide“, „Matthew has a new shoe on the one foot and on the other too“. I resented girls. But I also never played with the boys, I just looked at them.

When I was four, I lost my bracelet. I came home sobbing „I lost my Granny, my Granny's gone“. It was weird, because I couldn't read at that time and nobody had ever told me my brother's name was on that bracelet or that it referred to him at all. I never got it back and although to this very day I collect things with a G on them or even order them to be engraved „Grant“ or „Granny“ I somehow think of having lost my brother for good that day when I lost my bracelet. But,s till, it's only a date and in reality, MY reality, it all merges: him slipping away, both of us falling, us being together in the womb, me being claimed by life, me trying to claim my share in having a twin-brother by watching the boys, loosing my bracelet and finding my brother in the memories and feelings I ought not to have. It's all the same thing, really, twin-loss.

Twindream

It's time for a new photo. Truth demands that I mention from time to time that I don't really know if my twin was a brother or a sister. My mother never stopped to look and there is no neutral source to turn to. My parents's accounts about my mother's pregnancy differ a lot, so it's even harder to tell. A twinless twin-friend of mine did this painting for me when I first told her about my twin. From looking at photos from me she said I looked to her like a person who was in the womb with a brother, and she did this painting for me. She did it on a T-Shirt I have hung on a wardrobe since then, so it's always the last thing I look at at nights and the first thing in the morning :-).

What makes a brain a twin-brain?

Well, science may not back me up - yet - but reading Dr. Barbara Klein's book "Alone in the mirror" started me thinking a bit. There are numerous articles on the web telling you how you might proove (at least to yourself) that you had a twin who died before birth and there are some things always mentioned - changing partners often, unable to be alone, eating disorders - and some things mentioned very rarely or never at all.
Like "instant response". A twin fetus in the womb experiences instant response whenever he kicks his co-twin. It's part of normal existence to get a reaction to your every action. How could it be otherwise since there is no way for human beings to be closer than in the womb.
And here we have a child whose brain developed with a pattern of instant reaction to action born single after the co-twin vanished, was miscarried or stillborn. The brain which developed in this peculiar environment does not magically turn into a brain which underwent a different development only because the co-twin is no longer there, instant response is still a normal feature.
And here we have parents, family, teachers, peers who do not know this child has a twin-brain. They only realize he/her expects an instant response to his/her actions and they say "you're too demanding", "everything isn't about you", "you set too much store by yourself", "he/she is unable to socialize with others, be part of a team, let others have their share, is egotistic" and so on.
The twin-child does not know what's happening because he/she mostly does not know she's a twin herself and if she knows doesn't realize what it means to have a twin-brain. The only thing made clear to this child is: you are wrong. The way you behave is wrong. Your attitude is wrong.
The child ideed is wrong. He's in the wrong world. She never was meant to live in a world without someone to provide instant response. He was made to live in a twin-world, he's a twin.
This may sound like a minor thing, but it isn't. It may ruin a family, send a person to therapy for years with nobody able to really help. It's NORMAL for a twin to expect instant response as it is normal fort a twin to expect nonverbal understanding. It's not normal to expect the singleton world to understand this, but how is the twin-child to know. Since the brain can't be redeveloped the only help I can see, so far, is to remember every time the inevitable disappointment occurs to remember: I have a twin-brain. The other do not NOT respond to me because they don't like me but because they aren't twins.

Books on twins in general N° 1 "Alone in the mirror" by Barbara Klein

I wrote this review for Dr. Barbara Klein after reading her new book "Alone in the mirror. Twins in therapy." I still benefit from reading this book every day. It first opened my eyes to the simple truth that Dr. Brandt in saying "once a twin always a twin" was not just making a comforting statement especially for early loss twins - he simply stated the truth,.

Review of Alone in the Mirror

So, I've read the new book by Barbara Klein and it's an absolute MUST-READ for anyone who wants to understand twins—or him/herself, if you are a twin. I have read some scientific approaches to twinship before, including Segal and Sandbank, but Klein presents the reader not only with twin-behavior but with the underlying psychological reasons.

Dr. Klein carefully balances nature vs. nurture speculation (that is, she takes the primary attachment between twins into consideration and also describes the way this attachment develops through early and later experiences in the twin's life but she avoids judging what behavior is due to one or the other traits, inborn or acquired). So, for me as an early-loss twin, it is possible throughout the book to identify with twin-behavior and still take the different experiences I necessarily had through growing up without my twin into consideration. I was surprised how much I resemble the twins described, not always in behavior, but in the underlying principles. Since it is common knowledge that a multiple pregnancy is very different from a singleton-pregnancy, I don't see why this shouldn't be true for the babies as much as for the mother. Twins develop in a different prenatal environment than singletons, they ARE different and they are born fully equipped for a different world than the one they'll encounter. This is doubly true for the single born twin whose brain was exposed to stimulations which were entirely normal for him/her and which suddenly no longer exist after birth. Tricky situation. Although growing up with your twin is very different from being a twin and growing up single, the ideas and tips on how to deal with having to cope in a non-twin world are extremely helpful even for an in-utero-loser. Before I knew I was a twin I considered myself just a freak—which is a bad thing. After I learned about my twin's miscarriage I considered myself a twinless twin, a wombtwin survivor, a traumatized victim of early twinloss—which is not a good thing in itself, either.

After reading Dr. Klein's book I have just started to consider myself a twin trying to cope in a non-twin world (with additional handicaps)—which is in itself not a bad thing at all. It makes a great difference to see my expectations toward closeness and communication either as over-demanding, freakish or pathological or as a pattern stemming from an in-utero experience. It greatly helps to understand myself and be more tolerant with others. Before I ordered the book I was reluctant because of the more than 20 Euro I had to pay, but it was worth every cent. :-)
 

 

Books on Twinloss N° 11 "The Vanishing Game" by Kate Kae Myers

Inspite of the thrilling and often brutal story this is a beautiful book. I wouldn't have thought so at first glance, but the book charmed me more and more while I read on. Myers has a gift of letting places and people came real before the reader's eyes by the use of just a few words.
17-year-old Jocelyn has lost her twin-brother Jack in a car accident. She is devastated and wrecked with grief but spring break is approaching and her friends ask her to go camping to get her mind off things. Reluctantly she agrees to go - much to the relief of her foster-mother who is worrying about her - but then a letter arrives. Seemingly from her brother.
Jocelyn is shocked and then thrilled because she suddenly sees the possibility that Jack only faked his death and is really alive. She sets off to look for him, her foster-parents thinking she has gone camping. First she goes back to the place in Watertown where she and jack havge lived in a foster-home called Seale's house, five years ago. Their best friend in those days, Noah, is still in town and Jocelyn seeks him out. That he tries to kill her at first sight doesn't prevent them from setting out together on a search for Jack, and he isn't making it easy to find him.
When they were children at Seale's House run by a cruel lady who was more interested in the money than the foster-children themselves, Jack often laid out clues for Jocelyn and Noah, made them solve mysteries and riddles in order to find something he had hidden. He used the codename of "Jason December" then and this is the name on the letter Jocelyn got. Together she and Noah unravel the present riddle, their past, which has riddles of its own, and a present riddle which is getting bigger and bigger and very frightening.
If I tell the whole story anyone who is going to read the book will miss most of the fun in reading it ;-), but as for twin-loss "The Vanishing Game" does not offer a deep psychological view on the subject as "Surviving Sam" does for instance. Rather it shows the impact itself, the wordless, unbelievable shock not to be reasoned with that holds Jocelyn in its grips after years. Myers talent makes the impact almost visible - and leaves me as the reader with a feeling of hope at sunset in the last chapter, the possibility of a new day.
An unusual book and maybe the fact that Myers is a sing language interpreter even contributes to its special charm. Not only does she use signs a lot in her story, the talent she shows in making things visible must make her an outstanding interpreter in that field, I'm sure :-).

About living in the wrong world

There is not a website or magazine or book about twin- or multiple pregnancies missing the detail that it is very much different from a singleton pregnancy - for the mother. Still even the well-known National Geographic DVD on multiples states that the twins grow in the womb without ever knowing of each other.
This is - of course - not true. If a twin-pregnancy is different for the mother it is even so for the babies. They grow and develop in precisely the environment described as different from a singleton pregnancy and therefore their development is different from that of a singleton-fetus. Within the first three months of pregnancy almost the entire physical development of the human body takes place. After that it's mostly growing. During this crucial time a twin-fetus' body, every organ, above all the brain, develops in the described environment different from that of a singleton-fetus: the womb inhabited by twins. The twin-fetus becomes provided for a twin-life, it's body is shaped under twin-conditions and if there is a soul at all that is not miraculously inserted into the body at birth it undergoes the same process.
When twinloss occurs - especially during this crucial time of the first three or four months - the world the twin-fetus was shaped for suddenly no longer exists. It comes to this world fully equipped for a different one: a twin-world.
And here I am asking myself why I so often feel I am living in the wrong world ...

Photos as a means to heal

On a website about TTTS I found several stories from parents who had lost one of their twin-babies to that ugly disease. In order to create an image of his/her twinship for their surviving child they make pictures of the child and modify them so they show two children. Of course, it's the same child twice and nobody syas otherwise, but since TTTS mostly affects identicals it's still a way to create a visible might-have-been and parents find this healing for themselves and their survivors. I tried to do it on a picture of me at age age 3. These two pictures are set next to one another in a scrapbook my parents made for me when I was a child and they do look like twin-photos even without arranging them (which I am not very good at).

Books on Twin LOss No 10 "From a clear blue sky" by Timothy Knatchbull

I had read Timothy Knatchbull's story years ago in Joan Woodward's "The Lone Twin" and when I heard he had written a book himself I thought: I have to read that. Still, it took me almost three years to actaully buy it. Other books came between and I sort of forgot to look out for his and then it came my way again in a peculiar manner.
I had one of those crazy dreams I seem to have a subscription on. In this one I was washing my clothes in a muddy puddle and - not surprisingly - got them back just as dirty, but I kept putting them back into the murky water. The next day I just stumbled upon this book on I-don't-remember-which-site and ordered it right away. It was just the remedy I needed, the clear water missing in my dream.
Timothy Knatchbull, a great-grand-nephew of some degree to the Queen of England (I couldn't decipher the relation correctly not being familiar with Royals at all) was born an identical twin. In his book he describes his relationship with his brother Nicholas both matter-of-factly and touchingly. "In a way we were married to each other", he says, and that they had constant company and empathy, they truly were each other's best friend and inseparable. Before Nicholas died they had hardly spend more than two or three days apart.
Nicholas died at age 14 when the IRA put a bomb into the boat the Knatchbulls and their extended family, including the Grandfather, Lord Mountbatten, a prominent member of the royal family, used during their holiday in Ireland. Only Timothy and his parents survived. Twenty years later Knatchbull tries to trace his life back to the second he and his twin-brother were ript apart. he follows first his family's history and especially their link with the small town of Mullaghmore in Ireland, step by step, minute by minute, he approaches the fatal moment when the bomb exploded, then the rescue, the stay in hospital, the funeral he couldn't attend, the slow recovery (including a beautiful chapter about a stay at the Queen's own scottish castle for recuperation) and his way into adulthood till the point he realizes he is not as well as he makes everyone including himself think. To hear the sound of a bomb exploding in your every other day is not normal and healthy, he finally states and seeks out professional help. But more therapeutic then the appointments with a psychologist it's to Knatchbull to go back, step by step, to the day and place it happened and find a way to do what he couldn't do at age 14: say good-bye to this twin-brother.
I followed Knachtbull's story breathlessly and tried to make it my own. There has been a moment in my life when just something like that occurred, a bomb exploded under me and tore my twin and me apart. Only it wasn't a bomb. Only it had no sound in the womb. Only I will never be able to trace my life back to that moment the way Timothy Knachtsbull did. I tried to do it by proxy using his book, though, and it tought me a new respect for this moment, shrouded by the prenatal past, but nevertheless just as real and fatal as the IRA-bomb was for him and Nicholas. Maybe this is gain enough from an otherwise very thrilling and interesting book: to know something like that DID happen to me and I will find my way to deal with it. It cannot be the same way Knachtbull took, but a way can be found when I closely listen to the sound of MY bomb and try to find the traces leading to it. And on.

Am I a TTTS-Survivor?

Recently I gave the thought some room why my mother wasn't more shocked by having a miscarriage. Knowing my mother she could just have been occupied with something else and not notice much, but to give her credit I think she would have been more troubled had she lost a lot of blood. So, that she didn't indicates the placenta did not abrupt and this might indicate a single placenta, a monochorionic pregnancy. Some of my mother's symptoms match the placental disease of TTTS, Twin-to-twin-transfusion.syndrome. To make a long story short in those cases one twin gets too much blood and the other one not enough. It's very dangerous for both twins and even today where laser surgery is available sometimes both babies die. The twin who doesn't get enough blood - called the donor - often has little or no amniotic fluid, gets "stuck", is delayed in growth while the other twin - called the receptor or recipient - develops hydrops (fluid under the skin), has far too much amniotic fluid and often suffers from heart-failure due to having to pump too much blood. IF my mother had it - and there will never be any proof - it might explain the small size of the fetus, that it was able to slip out at all, and the symptoms she felt on herself like high blood-pressure, kidney failure and such which took her hospitalized sometime in March '63. Also, I had some symptoms that might be associated with TTTS at birth like a very large placenta and an umbilical cord unusually thick. Also, IF my mother had TTTS my twin most probably was a girl, although in v ery, very rare cases TTTS develops between fraternal twins, too, when their placentae fuse.