So, I was supposed to be a twin, but my twin was absorbed in the womb, which is known as "Vanishing Twin Syndrome", but i have a few questions about this

Submitted ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨KuromiGirl04@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

I’ve looked up Vanishing Twin Syndrome, and almost every article I have seen said that VTS typically only happens during the first trimester of the pregnancy.

But here’s the catch: My mom didn’t realize or know she was pregnant with me until 7 months into the pregnancy. And when she found out, the ultrasounds did show two babies. Me and my twin?

If Vanishing Twin Syndrome usually only occurs during the 1st trimester, is there a reason why it can happen so late during the pregnancy, as in the case with my mom and my twin?

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tonyn@lemmy.ml ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I’m no obstetrician but something the size and complexity of a 7 month fetus does not get absorbed, it comes out. There is likely some misinformation involved along the way.

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- KuromiGirl04@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  No, no misinformation. Everything I wrote in the post is exact what my mom told me about her pregnancy and my birth, and what she told me was what the doctors told her what happened.
  
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  - Typhoon@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    He’s saying the misinformation came from your mom or the doctors.
    
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  - jol@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    You’re mom didn’t tell you the truth, plain and simple. Whether she knows the truth, that’s another story. You can’t re-absorb a whole baby, with bones and all that.
    
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  - 11111one11111@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Which is all great but doesnt eliminate the likelihood of misinformation being the cause. Someone tryjng to protect another from what really happened. Whst does your dad say of the day?
    
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neidu3@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
She’s raising your twin in the attic to keep as a spare in case you decide to become a “prompt engineer”

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- DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Flowers in the Attic 2: IRL Boogaloo
  
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southsamurai@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Well, the key word is usually

Late term vanishing twin syndrome is a thing. It comes with its own set of issues as well. Since its also extremely rare, you’d have to be some kind of nerd to know it exists unless you’re an obgyn or at least a maternity nurse. I am neither an obgyn or a maternity nurse.

When it happens late term, and 7 months is very late term for it, you get an increased rush of complications, some of which can negatively impact the development of the remaining fetus. Hell, from what I remember, late term absorption tends to happen because there’s something going wrong already. Iirc (and don’t try to cite me on a test or anything), just being a little too cramped can trigger it, though it would be a very rare trigger for an already absurdly rare thing.

So, my best guess as a non doctor with zero access to the records of the pregnancy in question is that something happened to put the pregnancy at risk, and either your mom’s body or yours set off the cascade leading to the failure of the other fetus. It isn’t something that happens that late without some triggering event that’s outside of a normal pregnancy. When it happens early on, it’s a different story, it can happen for no detectable reason at all. But late term? Something went wrong that made it happen.

I’d have to go digging, and I’m currently brain fried, but one of the more common triggers worldwide is/was malnutrition. When the mother isn’t getting resources to grow both critters, either her body shifts to support one exclusively, or one of the two essentially cannibalizes the other. That one (again, I’m old and tired, so the iirc factor is iffy here) is most likely to happen when the twins share a placenta, or something like that (see, old man brain missing details).

Since you’ve said in comments that you were placed in an unusual orientation and/or location, that would point to some kind of issue with the uterus not having enough room for both fetuses (fetii? I think I like that better despite it not being duet correct lol). I seem to recall a case in India where a woman prone to twins had a pregnancy where this happened because her uterus had lost the ability to stretch the way they normally do. Something about scar tissue maybe? Been ages since I read about this stuff.

Anyway, late term vanishing twin syndrome is the terminology I know of. If there’s another, more formal terminology, iam not aware of it.

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deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
There’s a few things that don’t add up in your recollection of events.

You are being lied to, not necessarily directly by your mother.

If that’s if going to be a problem to deal with you might want to consider dropping the whole thing.

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- KuromiGirl04@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  It’s not necessarily a problem per se, I just don’t see why a doctor would lie to their patient, especially a pregnant woman
  
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  - gibmiser@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Easy. It was easier to lie than explain a complicated medical situation.
    
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  - jol@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Someone could make a lot of money stealing a baby
    
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  - Diddlydee@feddit.uk ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    [deleted]
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  - LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    It’s not necessarily a problem per se
    
    Some twins feel a strong bond with each other. Have you had any feelings your whole life that something is missing, like a part of you is missing?
    
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Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Your mom said the doctor told her the ultrasound showed “two babies” but I had an ultrasound at 5 weeks and they looked at the tiny embryonic speck and said, “there’s the baby!” In fact no babies are shown in ultrasounds, only fetuses. But my point was, they may have seen one 7-month fetus and one little shriveled thing and said “there’s two babies.”

I guess it’s also possible she brought two babies to term, made a “Sophie’s Choice” to give one up for adoption, and didn’t want you to be heartbroken or afraid of being given away too. And since other people had heard about her being pregnant with twins, she gave you a story you could accept as a child.

And another possibility is that the doctor gave her anesthesia or rohypnol or something and took the twin to put up for adoption, telling her it was absorbed. She’d know she had given birth but not remember it was twice. It’s terrible but not unheard of.

You could ask her, if you feel you’re both adult enough now to handle the emotional implications of all the possible explanations. Remember that you can still trust her love no matter what, but she might not know the whole truth and/or might be ashamed to admit it.

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- DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  took the twin to put up for adoption
  
  Lol my mom used to tell me how doctors / medical staff in China were sketchy af and sometimes they trafficked children… a problem fueled by One Child Policy and fertility issues and society’s obsessive desire to have children and especially a “male heir” to “carry on the bloodline”, so my mom told me stories about how “oh X person in Y province found that his parents arent his real parents and the hospital trafficked him and sold him…”
  
  Idk why mom keep telling me these stories, terrified me as a kid…
  
  Sometimes I wonder if I am even the real biological child of my parents… 🤔
  
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- KuromiGirl04@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Who is Sophie?
  
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  - southsamurai@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It’s a reference to a movie of the same name.
    
    The gist is that at one point, Sophie is forced to choose which of her children die.
    
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felixwhynot@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
You are The One

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- SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  There can be only one.
  
  Saying myself with a reference to Highlander.
  
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- Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  He’s the two.
  
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  - Oka@sopuli.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    She* or They
    
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Chee_Koala@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
“Fetus papyraceous occurs in 1 out of 12,000 pregnancies and 1 out of 200 twin pregnancies.”

Instead of absorption, it could have been papyrification, but apparently that leaves a kind of unmistakable trace for a doctor, which you mentioned so I assume was involved during birth. If pregnancy was non-standard in more ways then just finding out late, maybe those remains were so small that they were harder to notice?

I couldn’t find a written record of a similar situation where a second twin that was seen at 7 months and just vanished afterward, so this could be a unique mix of circumstances. That also makes it statistically a lot more likely that somewhere along the lines, information was missing, or got garbled in chaos, or was misheard, not unlikely during extreme situations like birth. I’m not even thinking about bad intentions, just all the places where one human error could be the missing puzzle piece.

Can you think of any extra information regarding your time during pregnancy and your birth you are willing to share?

It sucks that you couldn’t live with your twin, although I can imagine you have made you peace with it since. Having siblings can be a lot of fun, I know I love it :)

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- KuromiGirl04@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Oh actually, I have other siblings
  
  In fact, I’m the youngest of 7
  
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- KuromiGirl04@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Well, for those wondering how my mom didn’t realize she was pregnant until seven months in, I apparently wasn’t growing in her stomach. So she didn’t see any significant or concerning weight gain.
  
  I was somehow lying completely flat in her back for most of the pregnancy.
  
  As for my twin, I’m not sure. My mom said two babies were seen in the ultrasound results but what happened to my twin now im not so sure. Because my mom told me my twin was absorbed by the womb
  
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  - quinkin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
    You and your vanishing twin were invisible at 7 months.
    
    Your mom was not a little lady, so my best explanation would be that they never saw “both” of these babies at the same time in the ultrasound. They were both you.
    
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itsgroundhogdayagain@lemmy.ml ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The twin may be inside you. I know someone who also had a twin in the womb and she had a “mass” removed and the mass had hair and nails.

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- dgdft@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  What you’re describing is a teratoma, not a vestigial twin.
  
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- KuromiGirl04@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  … as someone who’s had many XRays and cat scans done in my life, I feel like a mass would have shown up long before now
  
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- kurcatovium@piefed.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  South Park?
  
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pelley@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Read The Dark Half by Stephen King.

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- KuromiGirl04@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Thanks, but I don’t really do horror. I get scared too easily and it makes it so I cant sleep at night
  
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- snooggums@piefed.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Far superior to the movie Malignant, although the latter is good for some laughs.
  
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someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Probably didn’t vanish.

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dhork@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Makes much more sense if this all happened at 7 weeks vs. 7 months…

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- KuromiGirl04@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Nope, my mom really didn’t realize she was pregnant with me until seven months.
  
  And funny enough, that’s the part people are always in disbelief in, not the twin part
  
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  - dhork@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It could also be plausible that your twin was not viable, and did not develop in utero. So when she says they found your twin in the ultrasound, perhaps what they saw was whatever remained after the earlier absorption.
    
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