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My daughter is a womb twin survivor. I went in for a doctors appointment and ended up having a emergency C-section beause my baby girl wasn't growing. Her twin had already died weeks before. They were supposed to be born in August but just one was born in early June. Somtimes I wonder what life would be like with five kids instead of four. But I know that, if that baby lived, then we wouldn't have been able to afford to send her to a Christian school. And she probably wouldn't know Jesus today.
I have always thought I must have been a twin. I always felt something was missing. I would pretend I had a twin, or daydream about it. My mother had bleeding when she was four months pregnant with me, so it is possible that I had a twin who died. She even said she wondered if I was a twin. In my early 20s I found out I had Asperger's Syndrome, and I thought that must explain everything, why I was so different growing up, but I still wonder, did I have a twin? I'm about 80% sure I did.
I knew early on that I was different from my siblings. I was very athletic and was surprised when I realized that my left side had little feeling, was weaker and I had little control of it. This began a lifetime of being told I was deformed. I have two extra ribs, only four lumbar vertebrae, a deformed right kidney, abnormally small uterus, abnormal right ovary, a tooth in my sinus. My heart is normal but the arteries are turned backward. I could never get an explanation. One day a nurse said that I might want to read up on vanishing twins. Finally it all made sense.
Several years ago I told my aunt that I always felt I should have had a twin brother. She told me to speak to my mother. My mother described how, when I was born, the midwife said that there had been two babies conceived but that only one had survived. I lead a largely happy life but deep down I feel a loss which I have never been able to fulfil. I am a very logical person but I know this feeling of loss is the absence of my twin.
My twin Bruce died at birth and I was always searching for something as a small child. I didn't know until I got older that I probably was looking for him. I think my life would have been more joyful, and I believe I would have been a different person had he been in it. I've always missed him, especially on our birthday. Losing a twin is like losing a part of me, and I've always thought, the best part of me.
I had a tube and ovary ectomy last week, after several weeks of diffuse pain and subfebrile temperatures the week before. Despite, no inflammation was being found, but a dermoid cystis. Back home, I started reading about it and was deeply impressed and overwhelmed: a lost twin? Was that why I led my life always looking for others to feel good and acccept rarely getting my needs fulfilled by them? Feeling increasingly alone and not belonging to this world? Thinking about death as a friend? Being attracted by the same type of partners - disastrous co-relationships with the deepest feelings of love and tolerating to be smashed on the ground by them, up and down all the time, helpless, eager for harmony and no way to manage it? Not able to demand respect for my own needs and feelings, but struggling to fulfill their wishes to keep away from conflicts and being left? I'm just at the very beginning of dealing with this issue, but I feel it's true for me: I lost my twin.
