A Meeting Place for Early loss twins

This is really my twin's Enjy's place, not mine. S/He does not have any other place in this world. S/He was miscarried at age four months in the womb. We were twins and made to be together for years and we were torn apart within seconds. This is the place where I go to talk to him/her and about him/her. Anyone who has lost a twin in utero or very early is very welcome here to read and share.
Anjy

Sunday, January 19, 2020

The Rocky Horror Wombtwin Show - my twin may have been deformed. So what!

Something every early and especially in utero loss twin wrestles with is the big WHY. Why did my twin die? Apart from the fact we may in most cases never know the real cause, we know a multitude of possible causes, and it's not an easy or even welcome task to face them.

We tend to imagine our twins whole, healthy and alive. We depict our life together within the parameters we take from living twins. We try to paint their picture along those lines. Were we identical? How would opur personalities have differed? What pranks would we have played? What would we have called each other?

Rarely the idea that our twins might have been handicapped enters our minds, but in fact this is one of the most probable causes for in utero fetal demise: a severe handicap, genetic or other, that renders the fetus non-viable.

Let me face it for a moment: My twin might have been handicapped, grossly disfigured, anencephalic, ancephalic, missing limbs, having a misshapen face or body or both, unable to move because of spina bifida, blind, deaf or retarded.

I was personally forced to face this possibility through a dream I recently had. I have learned, and my own experience supports this, that dreams about water recur to in utero life. In this particular dream I was sitting beside an indoor pool with my twin. We were both naked and talking animatedly. I could see my twin's body, but I could not see her head. My twin told me she had received an answer to an application she had handed in and that she had been accepted. I was so happy for her. Then I said "Let's got to the other side" and glided into the water. I had trouble keeping my head up and the other side of the pool, unfortunately, lay in a murky twilight. When I reached there, I realized my twin hadn't followed me and I was on my own.

So far it's a "normal" early loss dream. The recurring topics of being alone, having to pass through a narrow passage or being in the water are familiar to me. The missing head was new.

I have had dreams before in which I think my twin featured personally, but I can't remember if I ever noticed her not having a head. In this dream it was prominent.
And that lead me to facing the idea that my twin was ancephalic ort anencephalic. Missing a head or missing parts of the brain.

Anencephaly is much more common than ancephaly. The latter mostly occurs in conjoined twins when one stops developing resulting in the birth of a baby with additional limbs or a non-viable twin attached as a so called "parasitic twin". Babies born with part of the brain missing (anencephaly) or parts of the skull (Acrania) happen in singleton births. If detected early most of them are aborted, but there are moving and inspiring stories about mothers who chose to meet their babies whom some would likely call "monsters". Some their parents were told would not survive pregnancy, delivery or their first day lived for days, weeks or in case of a boy born with a condition called Acalvaria even years (https://dcoonline.networkforgood.com//).

Anyway, this is not the way I picture my twin sister.
Still this might have been the way she looked or would have looked had she survived.

Something each and every story I have read about those mothers and fathers who chose to meet their deformed children conveyed was: they are human. They are persons. They have a personality. They are worthy of life and worthy of love.
I know this, of course. The vague physical memories I have of being in the womb with my twin are skin touching, hands and feet meeting and intwining, acting and reacting. Mental or physical capability didn't matter much in the womb. We were together and this togetherness laid the foundation of how I, the survivor, perceive myself and my environment. How my twin would have looked plays no part in this. The fact that she was there, does.

Many "wombtwin suvivors" I met online try to imagine their twin as near to perfection as possible. They invent their lives together, they fantasize about nicknames they gave each other and their personalities in the womb. Some even cross over into the esoteric field and create dialogues with their twins before conception and how they planned their short stay in this world. If this gives comfort to people, I'm all for it. Personally I prefer to stick with medical reality, it's no less miraculous imhO. Yes, my twin may have been deformed, disfigured, her body not able to develop past a certain stage, she's still my twin. She's still the foundation of who I am.
And as far as souls are concerned, we know that these far exceed the possibilities of a limited body. Remember Stephen Hawking?
My twin's soul was - is- beautiful. More beautiful than mine, maybe, which has been disfigured by the trauma of prenatal loss. We will make a wonderful pair in heaven!