Jennifer, you asked <Am I reading this correctly? Isn't he saying that twins born prematurely have the best chance of surviving?> I think he is saying that the twins who got the most prenatal care are the ones with the best chances of survival, even if they are also delivered prematurely. It looks like docs who are "shepherding" the babies carefully in their intrauterine environments,with the help of more sophisticated prenatal testing, are more confident that the twins are strong enough to "make it" safely with the NICU improvements now available. Obstetricians are then more confident they can control predictable gambles of premature delivery by elective C. Section under regional anesthetic. The alternative is the unpredictable gamble of complications that are historically more common in labor and vaginal birth of twins (such as prolonged, inefficient labor, cord prolapse, entrapment of the aftercoming head of the second twin etc.) Those often require an emergency C. Section under general anesthetic for the second twin. Few doctors now have ever had the experience of performing either an chancy incision of the cervix, or an internal version. (This means using one hand inside the uterus and the other outside the uterus to try to turn and extract the second baby, hoping it did not suffer oxygen deprivation or worse.) This is what U.S.doctors did 4 or 5 decades ago when there was often no other choice. Many babies were lost or suffered permanent damage, and many mothers sustained severe gynecological injury during such procedures. "I know. I was there" as the saying goes. I worked L&D full time during the U.S. "baby boom" and watched it many times. Can anyone comment from countries with less medical technology available? Jean ********** K. Jean Cotterman RNC, IBCLC Dayton, Ohio USA ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html