Anyone hear of a vanishing twin

[dannysmom]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone has heard of this or had it happen to them....

I had a routine ultrasound at about 8 weeks to validate my pregnancy (I had it so early due to prior miscarriage as well as severe morning sickness). During the ultrasound, the tech said everything looked great, saw the heartbeat etc. When I went to the doctors shortly afterwards, he told me that he reviewed the pics and I had a vanishing twin. He explained that my pregnancy began as 2 but I miscarried one. I never bled due to the other one surviving.

At week 19 I had a level 2 ultrasound and that showed no abnormalities. I had another at 34 weeks and once again showed nothing. I gave birth on 6-7-05 to my son with ds.

Has anyone heard of this twin thing and do you think it relates to ds at all or just a weird thing.

[momofrussell]

Well, I have heard of vanishing twins but in the medical show I watched, the show WAS called Vanishing Twin and the twin ended up being a parasite off of the twin that lived.

But... beyond that, I do watch other twin medical shows that state ALOT of babies probably start off as twins, more then is reported.. so it's actually more common then not. It's just not caught or seen sometimes....

I don't think it's a DS thing persay.... I think it's just one of those twin anomalies....

One of my best friends here just gave birth to a baby boy a year ago. He is a surviving twin. She lost the other baby earlier in her pregnancy but she did bleed out. Sad and trippy all at the same time.

A.

[shellk]

Lisa,

I have heard of this "Vanishing Twin" thing, it actuall happened to me neighbor, and her daughter was born "typical" no DS. I don't think that it relates to DS, and was just a weird thing. Sorry to hear that it happened to you. I know that my neighbor didn't even know that she had had a set of twins until after her Ultrasound at 10 weeks, and that was just to confirm her pregnancy, and how far along she was.

Take Care
Michele

[PaigesMom]

I also had a friend who had a Vanishing Twin - she "lost it" around her 12th week of pregnancy, never bled, it was just 'absorbed' by the other fetus, according to her dr.'s. Her baby was born healthy and that was 2 years ago - no residual effects and she's had another baby since!

[Chester]

My friend tried hard and long to get pregnant, they ended up going through quite a bit of infertility methods. When they did find out she was pregnant they did ultrasounds early on, she too had a vanishing twin. Because they did the ultrasound so early, she thought she was having twins for about a month, but then on the next round the "twin" was gone. Her OB/GYN said that it is quite common but most of the time people don't have ultrasounds this early and don't even realize there were two babies.
Her baby does not have ds.

How is Danny? He's still just a little guy.

[dannysmom]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all the feedback. I didn't really think it was related to ds but since I had never heard of it before...figured I would ask.

Danny is doing great, I went to Boston today to donate blood for his surgery which is 1 week from today (Aug 4th). He is up to 9lbs 8oz and is 7 weeks old.

Thanks for all the support, this is a great website.

[Kristen]

My grandmother and second cousin both had to have surgery to remove a "twin" that had somehow not developed and became a mass on their ovary. It was a clump of disorganized skin cells with teeth and hair, but it looked nothing like a person or anything. The doctor said the cells that make the skeleton and organs and stuff never developed and somewhere along the line some hormones got it started growing again and it was just stem cells that were there that started reproducing. Very weird. He saidit wasn't a genetic thing, but I don't know. No one else in the family has had it (or twins for that matter) but I guess it could happen any time.

[Cbean]

There was speculation that we had a vanishing twin. I've talked with other moms of kids with DS and they had it too. I think it may be related but nothing documented to prove it?

[andrewsmom]

Funny.... I wasn't told of a "vanishing twin" but I did have excess amniotic fluid, and my cervix was large for date. The first ultrasound I had, she said she was looking at the possibility of more then one baby. On further ultrasounds (I had so many I lost count) I thought I heard them talking about a "twin" but my husband didn't hear them. I went into labor prematurely but let me tell you, I was as big as if I were having twins! With my 3 other kids, nobody could even tell I was pregnant but with Andrew, I can't tell you how many times I was asked "when are you do?" or "is there more then one?" "twins?". I am telling you, I was HUGE!! They even considered removing some of the fluid because there was sooo much. I don't know..... if there was 2 and the other survived, would the amniotic fluid and size of uterus be the right size for 2? hmmmm..... not sure.

[ashleysmom]

This really cought my eye.. When I was almost four months pregnant w/Ashley I had an ultrasound(which I can scan the pictures of) because I was bleeding, to my surprise there were 2 sacs 1 with Ashley the other with absorbing fetal tissue. Also Ashley cord was extremely short at birth. ALL other ultra sounds came back normal. It was a complete shock of Ashleys ds.

Also welcome

[Chris]

andrewsmom,

I had a ton of extra amniotic fluid when I was pregnant with Sarah and was told it was common when the baby has a defect. Sarah had Ds and a heart defect. Everyone used to stop me and ask how many babies I was expecting. I was HUGE.

Chris

[andrewsmom]

Chris... lol! Now that I look back I can laugh, but at the time it WAS NOT funny!

[SuziF]

If any of you have seen or read Steven King's The Dark Half. It's based on the story of a vanishing twin. Anyhow, since I worked on the movie I did alot of reading up on it at the time & it's supposed to be really common & nothing to do with DS~ just so common that you're going to run across DS pregnancies that had it too