Left-handedness/missing twins

[acw]

A few months ago my parents freaked me out by telling me there was a good chance I was one of twins, but that my sibling had died in the womb.  I'm left handed, but there is no left-handedness in the family - apparently this can be an indicator of a missing twin.  Not much evidence on its own, but my mum had a heavy bleed resulting in near miscarriage (and in fact nearly resulting in her own death) only a few weeks into the pregnancy.  My parents think this adds up to the possibility that she actually DID have a misscarriage at that point - that my twin died. 

 

I researched it on the internet, but stupidly added nothing to favourites and now can't find anything on it that includes the left-handed thing. 

 

Has anyone else heard about this "Vanishing Twin" theory and the link to left handedness in the "survivor"?  Is there any better evidence out there?

 

PS - I was born in early 1983 and my mum also claims that less frequent scanning in the early 80s could be the reason why the "other twin" was never spotted by medical staff.

 

Thanks for your help in advance!

[ShellyHall]

I have heard of this before.

My ex-Husband is a twin and he is left handed, whilst his identical twin is right handed.  I once read that when twins are identical one is right handed whilst the other is left handed.

[smudge]

acw - The same thing happened to Mum when she was 42. She was told she'd probably been carrying twins, but lost one of them after a heavy bleed. My youngest brother was born safely at full term - but he is right handed. Sorry I can't throw any positive light on your question.

[morg_monster]

I read in a book about twins, that some quite large proportion of pregnancies begin as twins.  I believe it was something like 20%.  Most of these end up as singletons because one fetus miscarries very early on; so early in fact that often it is mistaken for a period.

I'm unsure about whether this is true for identical twins; surely sharing the same placenta would mean that if one miscarried they both would? 

Finally: some identical twins do have the same handedness, and some twins are 'mirror' twins, it depends on their position in the womb.  These twins will basically be mirror images of each other; usually with opposite handedness, maybe cowlicks or moles in the same place but on the other side of the body.  Watching a program on discovery health the other day, they had a set of (adult) identical twin ladies, with rather bent noses, one bent left and one right!

[emmacherise2]

I think that this could possibly be the case..
Some people who posted answers said that with all twins, one is right handed and one is left.. this is not the case. It depends on what time the egg split after it was fertalised! alot of twins are both right handed, or both left.. these are classic identical twins. Other twins are "mirror twins". I am right handed and my twin sister is left handed which makes us mirror twins!! I do think that there is a good chance you did have an identical twin .. as i have heard about this before ( i research twins whenever I can as i love to learn more about them/me&my twin!)