Important post

Tributes to Althea Hayton

Althea Hayton, founder of Womb Twin, passed away peacefully on August 13 (sorry for the delay in posting this news on the blog). We are all ...

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Abortion of one twin

I have been thinking about the ways that a twin may die, and of course abortion is one way.
This is what I wrote about it in Chapter  5 of the new book:


Abortion of one twin
When a woman goes for an abortion but is unknowingly pregnant with twins, she may remain pregnant afterwards if both babies have not been removed. Some women in this situation may attempt a claim for compensation to cover the cost of bringing up the remaining unwanted and unexpected child. One such claim was successful: - Kim Nicholls, from Staffordshire in England, successfully claimed £10,000 compensation when she was given an injection to abort her pregnancy yet remained pregnant and delivered a healthy daughter some months later.  As a result of successful claims such as these, doctors are now advised to take particular care to check that only one foetus is present before every abortion procedure.


I cut this paragraph out of the chapter and it looks very short, hardly enough to do justice to how it feels to be  a womb twin survivor as a result of such a traumatic event.  
I am pretty sure that my mother aborted my twin - not deliberately, you understand, she would have had no idea she was carrying twins.  It took me until I was about 57 years old to get over it, but then I didn't realise I was a womb twin survivor until I was 55.  But once I knew what the problem was I could begin to heal.  The first step was to forgive my mother - oddly, it was the easiest step, for I know she had no idea what she had done and must have been most surprised when she found was still pregnant, after all that.    


My story is the last chapter of A Silent Cry, if you want to know more.  Its also available as a free download from here.


I hear from womb twin survivors from time to time who know (or  have guessed) that this is what happened to them.   One of those stories I adapted for this movie:

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