Vanishing Twin Series

 Victoria Rodriguez

No matter how much time passes, I am reminded in a million ways that my son’s twin isn’t earth-side with us. I have a beautiful child and I feel lucky to be his mom. It took over four years to conceive him. Our first ultrasound had two beautiful beating hearts labeled baby A and baby B. We were ecstatic. A few weeks later, we found out that baby B had stopped growing and just like that, we had one baby. 

There was never really time to grieve our loss because my focus turned to growing our surviving twin. For a while, I felt guilty for feeling anything but gratitude. We tried so long for this pregnancy I should be happy. Each milestone was filled with excitement but also so much worry. Would baby A just stop growing too? Could I have done something differently? The reality is, there is nothing that could have been done to prevent this loss. It just happens, but knowing this never made it any easier.

It took me a while to figure out that I could feel two feelings at the same time and both feelings were valid. It was okay to be happy that our son said his first words. And I could also wonder what his twin would have said or how their sweet little voice would have sounded. 

There are so many unknowns. I wonder what they would have been like, would they be outgoing like him or his introverted other half? Would they be obsessed with legos, or would they have their own favorites? 

Learning to hold two feelings at once has become an ever-moving balancing act, and so much of it happens in the dark. The grief started to feel isolating, so I found a way to share it through photography. I use double exposures, usually on film, to capture my son in different settings and different stages of his life. 

Most of the double exposures are done in camera, but sometimes there are images from a session that I feel belong together, so I make a composite image. I love seeing the images evolve over time as the series develops. 

These sessions feel good. It brings me closer to my grief, but it makes me feel complete. It’s easier to run from the things that hurt, but I’m finding ways to make it feel okay to be close to it. This series makes it feel like J’s twin was more than a sweet heartbeat on an ultrasound screen. When I’m looking at the film scans from a session, it’s like I get a little glimpse through a window of a world that I am only able to dream about.