“You’ve got your hands full” winks the middle-aged man with the bald patch as he holds the door open for my double pram at an angle that makes it impossible to squeeze us all through. I smile my gratitude and pretend that he’s not the fifth person today to make the exact same remark. What is it about kindly strangers needing to point out the obvious? Yes, one more baby than the average came out of my uterus when I gave birth. Yes, I know my life is more stressful than it might have been had there only been one. I don’t need the fact highlighting to me every time I pass through a doorway, thank you kind sir. Don’t even get me started on his face when I mention that I also have a 2 year old to assert her presence and a needy young golden retriever.
There’s something about double babies that draws people. I’ve learnt that producing small humans in multiples is a bad idea if you think yourself socially awkward, as you’re going to need to have a conversation with every person over the age of 60 that you come across on your travels. You also learn that almost everybody knows a twin / has a twin / is a twin / is married to a twin. The twin affinity is so strong that they are pulled towards other pairs of people like a magnet. Once they arrive, I can predict for you exactly which questions in what order I will be asked, so much so that I’m considering producing an infographic in the form of a leaflet that I can hand out to the kindly passer-by who wishes to know how long I was pregnant for, how much they weighed when they were born; if it was a C-section; if it was a spontaneous conception or IVF (though people often use the word ‘natural’ which infers something unnatural about all other ways of impregnation); if they’re identical; if there’s twins in the family (watch for the look of terror on people’s faces when I say no, nobody’s safe); and finally if I’m breastfeeding them both. Sometimes the brave questioner will go on to ask about the logistics of how that works. I don’t blame people, I had all the same questions myself at the beginning. I just think it would save me a lot of time if I could pass them a nice A5 bit of paper with some tasteful illustrations of myself tandem breast feeding at 4am.
“You’re braver than me – I couldn’t do it!”
The thing I find hardest about comments from strangers is that often they say things like “You’re braver than me – I couldn’t do it” with all good intentions. I know they are in their own way trying to encourage or compliment my tenacious strength and perseverance as I shove a nipple into one baby’s mouth and frantically rock the other baby in the middle of a coffee shop. The problem is that these sort of remarks flood my brain with self-doubt that maybe I actually can’t do it, if everybody else keeps telling me they couldn’t? What makes me any different to all these people? Am I doing a shoddy job? Can I keep this up for eighteen years? Is this level of stress going to cause me to go grey early and die before my time, whilst the parents of individual children continue to sip coffee at leisure?
Don’t get me wrong, there are unique joys that only twins can bring. Nothing beats the feeling of two little bodies filling your arms and your heart up with the warmth of their snuggles. At five months, the boys will automatically hold hands when placed down alongside each other. Yesterday during tummy time, they were facing each other and every time their wobbly heads popped up and they spotted one another they grinned and cooed a delightful greeting. When I walk into the room, I am welcomed by two little faces that light up and two pairs of eyes that track me wherever I go. It’s nice to feel so loved when the two-year-old is telling me that I have a stinky face and wobbly belly.
There are also the days that you do allow yourself to feel smug. The days when the sun is shining and you’re snapping together your giant contraption of a pram with the skill of a person who can juggle two babies with ease and carry a flat white. You see people look at you in awe and you allow yourself a casual hair flick because you washed it this morning. You see other parents with individual babies and think “if only you knew how easy you have it”, and inwardly high-five yourself for being outside the house. Yeah, I’ll take your comments about me being a superwoman, kind moustached stranger (mental note to pluck my chin hairs).
Another learning curve has been twin ethics – a niche concept. Two bedside cots, which one goes next to me and which one at the foot of the bed? Double decker pram – which twin goes on the top to see the sky and which on the bottom? I tend to swap them over as much as I can, in case you’re interested. But one of the most important things I’ve learnt from the twin parenting experience so far is that equality is different to equity. I suppose it’s the same with all siblings, but less obvious when both babies arrive at the same time.
One of my boys was extremely unwell with meningitis at six weeks old and we had a long hospital stay where he lost lots of weight and stopped growing. I watched his brother grow chunky on my breastfeeds whilst poorly twin was scrawny and hooked up to tubes. I felt like I was failing at treating them fairly; I’d spend every waking hour pumping breastmilk so they could both receive the same food. Doing this for three months nearly finished me off. It was only when we started to give formula (and found out about his cow’s milk protein allergy and tongue tie) that little twin started to gain weight and hit his milestones. For us in that moment formula was life-saving and nourishing, despite what my mum-guilt tells me.
I still feel guilty now writing it put in black and white that one of my twins is mostly breastfed and the other mostly formula fed
On formula my little twin has become the big fat chubby twin, with a heart-warming smile and delicious thigh rolls. If I had insisted on treating both boys the same he may not have recovered in the way that he did, and I will always be grateful for that. I still feel guilty now, at nearly 6 months, writing it out in black and white that one of my twins is mostly breastfed and the other mostly formula fed. People are often surprised by this, and I feel that I need to explain myself, as I am doing now I suppose. But the moral of the story (it seems to me) is that they aren’t the same person, and they need to be treated as individuals. I suspect this will be a lesson that I will need to remind myself (and others) of as they grow up.
adventuresinhumanbeing 