Everything There Is To Know About Vanishing Twin Syndrome

By Sharon Kelly


Pregnancies are always quite complicated, especially if there are twins involved in its birth. One of the complications that may happen during the birth of twins is known as vanishing twin syndrome. Here are a few things to know about this phenomenon such as the causes of it and the effects it may have on the babies and the mother.

As the name implies, it is a condition wherein one of two children born from the same womb would suddenly disappear while in the womb due to a miscarriage. When this happens, the child that is still there would absorb the fetal tissue and the placenta of the other one that vanished. Hence, it actually seems as if the other one suddenly did vanish into thin air, leaving only one child in the womb to be born.

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.

This is not the cause for pregnancies wherein this syndrome occurs during the later part of the pregnancy though. If ever this happens sometime during the second or third trimester, the doctors would usually treat it as a high risk pregnancies because of possible complications. One of the complications would be an increase in the risk of cerebral palsy for the surviving child.

While early detection of this kind of condition and an early occurrence may not be of any concern, late occurrence is. The key to this syndrome is to ensure awareness of what it is and how to deal with it. That said, it is highly recommended that women who are experiencing the symptoms such as pain in the pelvic area, bleeding, and uterine cramps go see her doctor right away.




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