Everything There Is To Know About Vanishing Twin Syndrome

By Sharon Kelly


There have been many stories about mothers who have been shown to have twins in the first few weeks of their pregnancies only to find out a week later that only one heartbeat is there. When they then check, the doctors have concluded that there really is only one child and the twin disappeared. This is known as the vanishing twin syndrome and is a common condition among pregnant mothers.

Just to give an idea, this is a type of incident wherein one of the children inside the womb would suddenly disappear leaving only one twin to stay there. Now, this would usually happen because of a miscarriage wherein the surviving child would take the placenta and fetal tissue of the one that is gone. In a way, it may actually seem like one child really did disappear from the womb.

As to when this incident usually occurs, it would usually happen some time during the first trimester of the pregnancy and is spotted through ultrasound. The first ultrasound will tell the parents that there are twins in the womb. The next ultrasound will then confirm if one twin disappears which will conclude that the mother had this syndrome.

This type of phenomenon happens in about thirty percent of pregnancies with twins and would usually happen at the very early stages of pregnancies. Mothers may not even know that they had this condition because one of the children may just have vanished letting the other child absorb everything. In any case, mothers may have readings of a miscarriage but only be aware of having one child.

As for the cause of this condition, there really is no concrete conclusion as to what causes it. Research believes that there is a link to some abnormalities in the chromosomes of the miscarried baby. Other research suggests that there is a link to increased chances and the age of women since it happens mostly to happen above age thirty.

If this does happen sometime during the first trimester of pregnancy, then mothers do not need to worry about any complications since the babies are still very small. At most, she would experience some symptoms like bleeding, cramps and some pelvic pain which may prompt the doctor to give some light medication to treat these symptoms. As mentioned above, some mothers are not even aware of having this sort of condition until the ultrasound confirms it.

Now, things may be a little more complicated when this condition occurs sometime during the later trimesters of pregnancy such as the second or the third trimester. If this happens, the doctor would put the mother at a high risk pregnancy because the surviving baby may have some complications. One example would be cerebral palsy in the surviving child or other things.

Now, early detection and preparation would be the key in avoiding such complications like the ones mentioned above. Awareness about the complications, the symptoms, and other things is extremely important. That is why it is recommended that mothers who are already having some symptoms that were mentioned above should go visit a doctor as soon as possible.




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