Another common potential problem in pregnancies with more than one baby is the so-called vanishing twin syndrome, and happens more often than you might think. A twin pregnancy can been diagnosed by an early scan in the first trimester. An ultrasound will detect twins from about six weeks when they are just 3mm long. Two tiny embryos can be seen but, about one in five of these will subsequently disappear before 12 weeks and only one grows to term.You may spend the several weeks between the two scans imagining what it would be like to have twins and you have probably been getting excited about the idea, and may now feel sadness at the loss of your expectations. When one of a twin conception fails to survive at this early stage, the twin remaining continues to develop normally, and hormone levels stay high which prevents a miscarriage, though sometimes there is some vaginal bleeding.
As the remaining twin grows, its sac spreads to fill the uterus, and the contents of the other sac are absorbed. The vanishing lost twin is reabsorbed into the mother's body or miscarried with little or no warning and few or no symptoms, unlike a regular miscarriage, where you normally have cramping and bleeding. Why this happens is not completely understood.
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