Twin Ultrasound at 6 Weeks: Detection & Risk

A twin ultrasound at 6 weeks needs to be done vaginally to detect twins this early in your pregnancy.

When you’re 6+0 weeks pregnant, your baby’s hearts should be beating – and the sonographer should be able to detect them at this point. This is when you’ll know for sure whether or not your expecting twins.

Can a twin vanish from an ultrasound?

Yes. There is a risk that you’ll see two heartbeats in an early scan and only one in a later scan. Both scans are usually accurate, but you’ve experienced Vanishing Twin Syndrome.

Vanishing Twin Syndrome is a miscarriage of one of the twins, but without bleeding or any other signs, you’d usually contribute to a miscarriage. The miscarried twin has died in the womb and is partially or completely reabsorbed by the other twin or the mother.

Vanishing Twin Syndrome usually happens early on in the pregnancy, in the first trimester. In the majority of cases, the surviving twin is not affected by the miscarriage of the other twin.

Can a twin be found later in the pregnancy?

There’s always the risk that a sonographer can overlook a second baby, but the advances in ultrasound technology have reduced the occurrences of overlooking a baby.

If you don’t get ultrasound scans there’s a much higher probability that your twin pregnancy will be overlooked.

Monochorionic-diamniotic twin ultrasound pictures