After the miscarriage, life seemed to slow down to a hobbled scrape across the floor. I re-embraced my dear friend caffeine with alacrity, but I was afraid to drink alcohol because I thought it would impede my recovery and make me more depressed. I had to tell everyone I had told about the baby that I wasn’t pregnant anymore, and most people had known for just a couple of weeks. I hated being out in public, because in Seattle it seems like there’s a lot of hugely pregnant women in late summer and early fall. I mean, they were freaking everywhere: roly-polying around Greenlake, supervising their other kids at the playground while I pushed Franny on the swings, and tumbling out of SUVs en masse on their pregnant-lady outings like clowns out of clown cars. Grief is irrational; it took me at least a month to stop hating them on sight.

I bled for a month, and intermittently after that, which was a real morale-killer. When I had finally slowed down, I decided to celebrate by having a birth-weekend instead of a birthday to distract myself in late October. I started running again, farther than I had in a long time, in anticipation of the 5k I was preparing for.

Running hurt; everything hurt, and I was worried. I had let my medical insurance lapse in late September after the miscarriage because I didn’t have regular work or funds. I started having graphic nightmares about giving birth to a tiny, baby-sized skeleton, about losing things and people, and about being lost myself. I decided to keep my head down and focus on feeling better by eating healthy, walking and running, and getting lots of rest. I thought if maybe I could lose the ten pounds I had put on, which had hit me hard in July and August, I might feel better about myself.

One early morning in mid-November, I sat bolt upright in bed after having another nightmare about losing or forgetting something. I was supposed to go to work that day, which I was dreading. Leaving the house on a drizzly morning when it’s still dark out has never been my idea of a good time. I was feeling even weirder than usual. Something was different–a fluttering sensation?

“Wake up!” I whacked my companion who was innocently sleeping next to me. He sat up and looked at me, confused. “I’m being kicked. Here.” I pointed to my stomach. We stared at each other incredulously.

“You’re still….”

“Yep,” I said.

We were horrified. Absolutely horrified. As I mentioned, he was present for the miscarriage, and saw what happened. I bled for a month after, meaning my cervix was open then. I was completely convinced that anything that was still inside was going to have horns and a tail. I thought about my nightmares about the gory skeleton babies. I had that sick, sucking sensation of panic where you feel like the ground under your feet is abandoning you. We had grieved for this baby and let it go; I did not want to deal with this at all, ever again.

I called my midwife and told her my suspicions.

“Well, I’ve been in practice for twenty years, and I’ve never heard that was possible,” she said. “But if you’re sure you’re being kicked, then you better go in for an ultrasound. We need to see what’s going on in there.”

I was sick with anticipation. I knew the ultrasound would provide the final answer. I assumed the worst–how could this baby be normal? My midwife scheduled me to get an ultrasound for that same week and my companion went in with me. He was bizarre that day; we were both squirrelly, snappish. I realized we were both teetering on the edge of a complete freakout.

The technician was a relaxed, younger woman whose presence was very soothing. At first, we didn’t tell her that my pregnancy was abnormal. I believe we tacitly decided to let her drive her wand around to see what she could see on her own. We talked about mundane things, like the fact that the gel that they put on your stomach now has a little warmer, so I didn’t get the cold shock I got with Franny’s ultrasound. The technician asked us if we wanted a boy or a girl, and we said that we JUST WANTED IT TO BE HEALTHY. I think my eyes probably bugged out a little bit when I said this and the technician looked taken aback. Well, that and the fact that I was white-knuckling the armrests, coupled with the protruding veins in my neck.

She steered the wand around my stomach, ticking off her checklist.

“Spine. Looks good. Brain is good. All the organs are there and in the right place. The head is a good size. Do you want to know the sex?” We nodded, mutely, eyes wide. She swung the wand around to my lower abdomen, chasing the baby’s hind end. Butt, flap, flap…I recognized it right away, just like Franny.

“It’s a little girl. Here’s her labia,” she said. I almost started crying. I hadn’t even been thinking about the sex until we heard that her bones and organs were fine. The technician finished with a picture of the scan, which was more precious to me than anything I had ever seen. There was our daughter’s big head, with her enormous normal brain.

We had lost a fraternal twin. We had mourned that baby and let it go, and now we had to deal with the fact that its twin had hung on, and appeared perfectly normal, despite all the physical trauma.

“Jeez,” I said on the way out. “I’m pregnant again. Still. This is a little Twilight Zone.”

“Yes,” said my companion.

“Are you happy?”

“I think so. I’m stunned.”

“I think I’m going to stop running,” I said, decisively.

I made an appointment with my midwife again, who agreed to continue seeing me. On my first visit back, she examined the scans, clucked her tongue, and passed the information to her student. She crossed out the place where my entire second trimester would have gone on her chart. I was almost six months pregnant.

Information about Vanishing Twin Syndrome:

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