‘Every serving of grief is a full serve’: The challenge of losing a twin in utero
The loss of a twin during pregnancy triggers contradictory emotions. How to square the happiness that one survived with an enduring sadness that the other didn’t?
By Shelley Eves
Credit: Paulo Lim/illustrationroom.com.au
Ihold my five-month-old up against a mirror so he is doubled. I squint, searching. My baby and I are haunted. Everywhere we go, a small ghost follows.
I live on the Cooks River in Sydney. It is like lungs to me. I first got to know it on long sunset walks with my partner, Joe. The waterbirds became characters to us. The pelicans, somehow both ungainly and graceful. The spoonbill, a doddering old aristocrat. The cormorants, spreading their wings to the sun. And, occasionally, my favourite – a delicate, grey heron.
When we had our first son, twilight walks along the river’s casuarina-lined paths were the only remedy for the witching hour. As he grew, he graduated to bike rides. Then I became pregnant for the second time.
It’s 15 minutes past our appointment time for the second ultrasound of the pregnancy. The first had been eventful. We were hoping to see a strong heartbeat. Instead, we saw two. The sonographer labelled them Twin A and Twin B. I loved them both – immediately and intensely.
The next six weeks were a flurry of preparations. We needed a bigger couch. I needed to figure out how to fit three car seats in my sedan and how to grow two babies in one body.
My name is finally called and we follow the sonographer into the dark room. She points out Twin A’s brain, arms, legs. She swishes the wand to show Twin B. “This little one has stopped growing and there’s no heartbeat.” She tells us like she’s ripping off a Band-Aid. The twin’s body is crumpled, a marionette with nobody holding the strings.
I’m crying. An obstetrician appears. “This is very common with twins,” she informs me. “Multiple pregnancies are high-risk so, overall, this is a good thing.”
I’m embarrassed by my tears. She says we can go home. There’s nothing to be done: Twin B will either be absorbed back into my body or remain in my uterus until the birth.
Everything feels wrong. I wish for Twin A to die as well. If I get pregnant with twins again, maybe I can have them both back. I’m confused by my grief. We planned on having a second baby and we are having a second baby. Be grateful.
Joe and I attend the next Twin Clinic appointment. I hate that I still have to go. The midwife in charge of the floor seems run off her feet. “Where’s your latest report? We can’t see you without it.”
Everything feels wrong. I wish for Twin A to die as well. If I get pregnant with twins again, maybe I can have them both back.
I’m frozen. She is visibly irritated by my silence. I look helplessly at Joe. He explains. I cry. The midwife plonks a box of tissues in front of me. “This is very common,” she states. It’s a line we keep encountering. You’d think no twins had ever been born.
We’re instructed to book in again. Perspex separates the receptionist from me. It’s hard to hear. She takes my paper slip. “Twin Clinic?”
“No, just midwife care.”
“No?”
“One died.”
“Just one appointment?”
“No, one died.” I have to shout. People turn to look. Nobody wants to hear about foetal death while waiting to check on their own baby.
I’m told no remains of Twin B were found: “Absorbed by you and the baby.”Credit: iStock
The pregnancy crashes onwards. Just 10 days after the last ultrasound, I’m back on the sonography bed, gel on my belly, trying not to panic. The sonographer finds Twin A’s heartbeat and blasts the volume, filling the room. I cry with relief. “I have to look at the other one,” she tells me. “Should I tilt the screen?”
But I am desperate to see her again. She is still crumpled, a little shadowy now. Afterwards, Joe comments how sad it was: Twin B so much smaller than Twin A.
My loss happened a few months after a tragedy had befallen someone in our friendship circle. I tell just a few close friends what I am going through, not wanting to pull focus. I yearn for the same kind of practical and emotional support we’ve been providing, but my loss feels too small to deserve it. I isolate myself as I become visibly pregnant.
I express these feelings to one of my close friends. She has come to see me. We sit on the riverbank as the sun goes down and the air chills. The smell of mangroves is heavy. Every serving of grief is a full serve, she tells me.
I’m stuck between the living and the dead, carrying both in my body simultaneously. I feel disloyal to Twin A for grieving and disloyal to Twin B for feeling a flutter of excitement. Joe asks if I want to give Twin B a name, but I’m repulsed by the idea. “I don’t know. That just feels too … big.”
My GP makes a referral to a perinatal counselling service. The therapist’s calm sincerity cuts through layers of minimising and intellectualising until I’m just sitting in my grief. I sob for the entire 50 minutes. I tell her I’m certain Twin A is going to die, too. She suggests I find one activity that helps me connect with the baby.
I start to walk along the river daily. The herons appear like apparitions, thin and the palest grey. I’m reminded of an Ada Limón poem in which a stepfather and stepdaughter believe that a heron sighting is reassurance it will be a good day. Eventually, they tell each other they have seen one even when they haven’t. With each heron I see, I let a little more hope creep in. I begin to believe the baby might live.
By the time I’m given the date for my caesarean, I’ve let myself feel a little more excited. I’m wheeled into surgery and one hour later, a furious, crying baby is held up for me to see. He quietens as soon as he is placed on my chest.
I’m stuck between the living and the dead, carrying both in my body simultaneously.
It’s an ordinary kind of magic, repeated in countless births across millennia. He is the softest thing in the world. He smells like oatmeal. He is actually here.
I’m told no remains of Twin B were found: “Absorbed by you and the baby.” I feel OK about this, ready to give Baby my full attention.
As the baby clothes on the line get bigger, I’m determined to treasure my time with him. I continue the river walks with him. He’s serene and sunny. I think he’s staggeringly beautiful. I am happy. I tell myself there’s no reason to be sad about Twin B any more.
The river is alive with mullet, which have returned to spawn. It’s a year since I found out about the twins. My dormant grief hits me again. I imagine Twin B alongside us everywhere we go. I want them both. I examine Baby for signs of his absorbed twin. A spidery purple birthmark on his arm? I wonder how I might have absorbed my baby. Surely she has soaked into the marrow of my bones.
I feel a darkness while Joe is away for work one night. I call the Red Nose bereavement line. I describe my resurfaced grief. How it feels shameful to grieve while others are going through worse. “Well, we have a rule here at Red Nose – no hierarchies of grief. Your grief is just as valid.” This is a fire extinguisher to my turmoil. Turns out comparison is the thief of grief.
The herons appear on every walk now. On the railing of a bridge we walk across. Beside us as we sit on the riverbank. In the middle of a path as we round the corner. I imagine the herons as an earthly body for Twin B. I have a heron tattooed on the inside of my arm. Where I couldn’t choose a name for my lost baby before, I find myself referring to her as Heron.
I take Baby with me to a therapy session. I remark at how astonished I am that, despite the stress and sorrow of my pregnancy, he has turned out to be sunrise personified. “Well, that’s because of you,” says the therapist with certainty, kindly attributing the magic to me. I wonder how many times she has cleared a pathway for love and attachment between parents and their babies – perhaps before she’s even stopped for a lunch break.
After a few days of heavy rain, the banks of the river have broken. The golf course is flooded and becomes the wetland it’s meant to be. The four of us walk together, a complete family. Baby is sleeping luxuriously on Joe’s chest and our three-year-old splashes through a pond.
A white-haired woman in a red fleece vest walks towards us, her terrier bumbling happily behind. She chuckles when she sees my son kicking water high into the air. “Oh, it’s so joyful, isn’t it,” she says wistfully. I think of all the mothers whose children are grown up and how painfully fleeting it all is. I want to grab this time tightly in my hands so it can’t escape me.
My son runs over, pointing at some crickets skimming across the water, their golden bodies making V-shaped ripples behind them. “What do crickets do, Mummy?”
“They sing really loudly. They jump high. They fly.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know; they’re just living, I guess.”
We wander on. As we slosh through the wetland, I note the birds. Spoonbill. Cormorant. Duck. Waterhen. I search for a heron. I don’t see one today. Maybe I don’t need to.
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