A Vanishing Twin

You may be extremely excited about carrying twins, and then on one of your visits to your doctor, you are told that one of the twins has disappeared and now you will be giving birth to a single child only.

You may be a little shocked, but this does happen in a few cases and this phenomenon is normally referred to as vanishing twin.

What happens?

You may go wondering, how one of the twins could possibly disappear from your womb and where it did exactly go. The phenomena of vanishing twins usually takes place in the earlier part of pregnancy, within the first trimester, and since the embryo is really small at that time you may not even realize when it may get discharged with a bit of bleeding.

Quite like a normal miscarriage you may experience only a little bit of bleeding, some cramps in the abdominal region and mild discomfort in the pelvic region.

But well, miscarriage may not always be the reason for the vanishing twin because in most cases one of the twins vanishes just because it gets absorbed by the other twin, or by the placenta or in the amniotic fluid. In such cases there may be no visible symptoms and you may come to know of this fact only through an ultrasound.

There’s nothing to worry

When you hear from your doctor that one of the twins in your womb has disappeared, you may get worried about your pregnancy and the remaining twin. But there is absolutely nothing to get worried, because most likely your pregnancy will continue normally and the disappearing of one of the twins won’t have any negative effect on your pregnancy or on the remaining twin.

While, as we’ve just mentioned, vanishing twin may not create any problems, the only problems that you may encounter will be the emotional ones. You may have been excited about giving birth to twins and then when one of the twins goes missing you may be filled with sadness.

But however sad you’re feeling, you need to overcome it because staying sad is definitely going to have some negative effect on your pregnancy and the remaining twin who is growing inside you.