Since Elijah was born, I've just occasionally had my mind drawn to something, and now it's on my mind again so I thought I would blog about it. It's likely NOTHING at all but it's distracting me so I want to get it "out there" and then I'm done.
Elijah has such a sweet little head of hair! He has the least hair of any of my newborns, and hasn't yet got to the stage where he's losing it yet - soon though, if memory serves. Very soon. He is 12 weeks old now, and around now is when their hair usually starts to come out. Maybe a month later is when the new "real" hair starts growing in. My hair starts falling out like crazy at the same time (which I really really dislike!) so I know that is coming soon for me too.
He does HAVE hair though, even though he's the least hairy so far! ;) He has very little on top, but more of the usual amount (for my babies) on the back and sides. He has what I have affectionately referred to as a sweet little twizzle-top! :) His hair at the back grows in one direction while the hair on his crown, right on top at the back, grows the other way entirely, lol! It makes his little bit of hair at the back on top look like it's a little criss-crossing tuft of fluff! Melts my heart :) It's more fluffy and gorgeous when it has just been washed.
Elijah's hair whorl - the circular pattern on the back/top of the head - is different from all the other boys. They all have a hair whorl in the centre of their heads, which is the usual for human beings in general. I know they can vary. Matthew's is off-centre, slightly to the left. The others are all dead-centre. I did some reading on this the other day when I was pondering about it again. I know people have babies who have a right-sided hair whorl, or a left-sided hair whorl, but it's not very common, and it most commonly seems to occur in mirror twins, especially if the other members of the family and other siblings have central whorls. Mirror twins account for 25% of identical twins. They are the ones who have separated the latest. Any later and they would be conjoined twins. They are already developing their left and right sides when they separate, so the two identicals are mirrored in terms of left and right. They have hair whorls on opposite sides of the head, rather than central, and one is right-handed, and the other left-handed, and their dental developments are mirrored, etc, etc.
Elijah's hair whorl is SO far over the right side of his head, if I take a photo of the back of his head it's barely in the photo! Going to make for some interesting practice for me when it's time to cut his hair! ;)
But I wonder... I remember the scan at 6 weeks when the sonographer thought she could see another little blobby baby behind the first one, and another heartbeat. But there was so little room and he was so tiny that it was hard to be sure. I could see what she was seeing, even before she said it to me. She had me come back at 8 weeks for another scan to double check, and when I had that scan there was no sign of any other babies or heart beats, so that was that. It didn't mean there HADN'T been another little one there at six weeks, just that by 8 weeks, there wasn't. Not uncommon, I'm told, with twin conceptions, as many are unknown due to one twin not making it very early on.
Now I wonder all over again, because Elijah has such a strong one-sided hair whorl when it isn't a family trait in our family, and all his siblings do not. If there was another baby in there, they would definitely have been mirror-twins, because I noticed at the time (I blogged about all this at the time, actually) that there was no separating membrane, so they would either have been mirror twins or conjoined twins (and they weren't conjoined I presume, because one of them is here!). If they separate late enough to be mirror or conjoined twins, they share not only a placenta and a sac, but an inner sac as well. I was worried at the time, as I said here, because they would have been mono-mono twins. That would have given quite a high percentage chance of both twins dying too early to be saved - such a risky type of twinning.
I wonder if I really was expecting twins early on, and if so, just as the possible evidence at the first scan suggested, Elijah is the surviving twin from the right side? Pointless ponderings, hence the title, but I keep thinking... I don't mean to, but I just somehow do. In a way I feel sad, like a little reminder whenever I see the back of my sweet boy's head:
...Because what if there was the potential for the most adorable view of a little pair of mirror whorls side-by-side on my lap? What if there was a precious little person with the missing left-sided whorl to match Elijah's exactly, who would turn out to be left-handed, and get the opposite tooth to the first one Elijah gets, within days of his brother? What if there were seven instead of six? What would his name have been? How in the wide world would I have coped with twins?!! ;)
But then I am grateful. And I don't mean just three words on a page, "I am grateful". I am stripped to the core, raw, clutching my heart with emotion GRATEFUL. Because I feel that if I did have mono-mono twins in there, and God allowed one of them to die early, it would have been to save me the heartbreak of progressing further in my pregnancy and then losing them both due to the risks of mono-mono, just before viable gestational age. I can't fathom. I think if I was actually pregnant with twins like we had wondered at the time of the first scan, then if my little left-sided darling had not died, I would not have Elijah here with me now. I would be none the wiser as to his right-sided whorl of dark newborn hair, or his resemblence to Nathan, or his precious smile. It has been quite an exhausting first few months so far with Elijah, because of his distress and things. But I haven't had impatience with him, which is so different to how I felt whenever my first two babies were distressed for hours or wakeful, or fussy. No impatience. Just so grateful that he's here, and a weird sense of gratitude that sometimes feels just so SILLY that I am reluctant to admit it here, because what if I wasn't pregnant with twins in the first place?! ;) But a sense of gratitude towards the little left-hand bean for the laying down of his life, because it might be the reason that Elijah made it into my arms.
I do think about "what if?" and about my "other" little boy, who may not even have been - I will never know here on earth - but he really really might have been, and so of course I think about him, because if he WAS, then he was his own person with a heartbeat, created intentionally, and waiting to meet me and Neil and all of his brothers one day after we die. I feel silly when I don't KNOW if he was really there, but since there's no proof that he wasn't, and there's evidence that he was, I will probably think of him every single time I lay eyes on Elijah's hair whorl for the rest of his life. To me, it's the only physical reference to his existance, and it makes me smile and ache at the same time, but it's overall a good feeling.
So grateful for this baby boy who gives me so much joy, and so glad that, for whatever reason, God has enabled me to hold him and love him and raise him.
4 comments:
Such a precious little head!!! And an interesting ponder. He is absolutely adorable!
Beautiful boy! And sweet sweet hair as a reminder of the gift of life. Hope things have been manageable in this hot weather with so many small people inside x
Such a lovely, interesting post. Definitely food for thought, and I think our instincts are correct in such matters. I still think of my Christmas baby, the one who could have been, even though many wouldn't have acknowledged he even existed at all. But WE do, as mothers, know when there was a life there, for however brief, and I'm glad that it brings you comfort knowing that Elijah once had a twin and he died for a purpose. *hug*
When my son was born a few months ago, I noticed his hair whorl was off center. I didn't think much of it. I just thought of it as one of the many normal things that made him unique. Genetics is one of those things that fascinates me, so I got curious and did some googling. Maybe the off-center whorl was associated with something else? That's when I came across this post. I wonder if the healthy baby boy I'm rocking to sleep was a twin? I struggled with miscarriage after miscarriage. After 7 of them, I had nearly given up all hope of ever carrying a baby to term. Then a little over a year ago, I decided to give it everything I had. I did a round of clomid, an ovidrel injection, and progesterone. The clomid did it's magic and an ultrasound showed two mature follicles. When I peed on a stick and got a positive result a couple weeks later, I was cautiously optimistic. My fertility doctor had me go in for a blood test to see what my hcg level was. The next day the nurse called me back and told me the results were VERY positive, and I could be carrying twins. I spent a week and a half wondering if I was carrying twins, before finally going in for an ultrasound. The ultrasound showed only one baby, and I'll admit I was relieved. I would have been a nervous wreck wondering if I could carry twins to term, let alone one baby. After reading your post I feel even more blessed to have a healthy, perfect baby boy in my arms. I knew I was lucky to be able to carry him to term, but to think that maybe he was a mono-mono twin and might not have made it makes me feel even more lucky to have him here.
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