Your article (‘Just devastating’: the rarely discussed virtual taboo of losing a baby, 19 April) discusses the effects on the family of a stillborn baby, but one group was not mentioned: those who, like me, lose their twin at birth. My sister Diana was stillborn; 44 years later I still miss her. People may say that I never knew her, but I spent nine months or so next to her in the womb – there is no closer bond.
It was not until I was 18 and discovered Joan Woodward’s book The Lone Twin and began talking to other twins who had lost a twin at birth that I began to understand all the ways in which I had been grieving for her throughout my childhood.
We may not consciously remember our twins, but we have a sense of another person there who has now gone. Attachment issues are common. I would ask anyone who parents a child who has lost a twin in this way to be open about it. I was lucky because my parents were open about my sister; I know many who found out by accident and who have struggled with such an important aspect of themselves being hidden from them, as well as a sense of things falling into place.
People from multiple births have a different experience from those who were alone in the womb. I may have lost Diana all that time ago, but I am still a twin.
Ingrid Warren
Oxford
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