We want to share more of our life on this blog than just the here and now and so I thought I would go back a bit and talk about raising twins. Yes, we have twin boys as well as a girl (who is our oldest child). They are all grown up now but the memories of their childhood are still very real and held close to my heart. Not that it was all happiness and fun – having twins is not an easy ride but there are ways to make it easier and I would like to share some of my tips.
I also want to make it very clear that we consider all children to be a blessing and we love each of our children dearly. But we also know that the concept of having two babies at the one time can be very scary!!
So here is a post about the beginning of our journey with twins.
It all started on the day of my second ultrasound during my second pregnancy. Until that point in time I thought I was expecting one baby (a reasonable assumption!). Half way through the ultrasound the technician started muttering about history of twins in the family and we asked what she meant. She told us to wait a minute then brought up pictures of two heads! Of course that meant she had to start all the measurements again and my first concern was whether or not I could last the distance after all the water I had just drunk. She proceeded to measure each baby and reassure us that both were a healthy size etc. Then the shock set in and stayed that way for about a week.
I had to go back to work after the ultrasound and must have looked a bit upset because a colleague asked if I had ‘wet my pants’ during the scan. I replied, ‘No but I’m having twins’. I was gratified to see him blanch and look very apologetic at his joke. That was our first encounter with the very common view that twins are the worst thing in the world to happen to someone! But of course that is far from the truth and we began to appreciate how blessed we were – once the shock had subsided. After all we already had one cot, one pram, one high chair and lots of clothes left over from our daughter! One small snag was that we lived in a third floor apartment in a two bedroom unit. We had two balconies though and imagined a cot on each balcony. Needless to say we moved house before they were born!
Back to the blessings
I reasoned that:
We were getting two for the price of one (this was actually true in the hospital – they waived the bill for the second twin!)
Our daughter was getting two siblings at once – more to love all at once!
Only one pregnancy meant less time out of work for me and less interruption to my career (At that time I was a scientist only recently finished my PhD so I thought this was a priority)
Only one pregnancy meant one less time I had to go through morning sickness!
I like to be organised and efficient in what I do so it made sense to me to have two babies at once.
I juggled one baby and a PhD write up so how hard could two babies be?
But despite our list of blessings and our determination not to be intimidated by the idea of two babies, people were equally determined to be negative. Comments like: you’ll be up all night with two babies, you’ll be exhausted, you won’t get anything done, your poor daughter – she won’t get a look in. Then there were the questions: How will you cope? How will you manage all those nappies? Will you need help at night?
How the heck did we know? We were, after all, having our first set of twins not our fourth! However, I can still say today that having twins is a blessing. If anything the sceptics helped me cope – because I was determined to prove them wrong.
So what did we do?
We prepared our new house for our babies. I rested from about 24 weeks on in the pregnancy because I had no choice – I struggled to walk around the house let alone go to work. I gave up any thought of career for that period of time and settled in to do my best for my family. We did our best to prepare our daughter for what was to come, although it was a little hard for a 4 year old to comprehend.
We focused on our family and did not seek input from others as we prepared for the birth. We knew the sex of one baby but not the other but didn’t share any of this information with others. It was our special time and we wanted to enjoy it and block out the people who seemed determined to worry us! However, my sister in law said something to me that helped me enormously. She had just given birth to her second son and told me that she had no goals for the next few months other than to look after her boys and her own health and not worry about her home or what anyone else thought. This sounded like a good plan to me too and so I gave myself permission to block out the world, my career and people who were distressing me!
When our twins arrived and we brought them home we found that we needed very little help. Not that there weren’t long hours of feeding, washing and changing etc. but we were organised and established a routine quickly to give ourselves a chance to enjoy our babies and our daughter and try to live a normal life. Did we survive? Yes of course. Our twins are nearly 28 now and one was married last week! Not only did we survive but we had fun along the way too!
Stay Positive!
I have a lot more to say about raising twins but that will come in later posts. The fact that we have twins still causes a reaction today as people try to impose their predetermined ideas about what it is like. I laugh about it now but 28 years ago I sometimes took it to heart. So if you are expecting twins, count your blessings and enjoy every moment. You should keep an open mind and prepare yourself as much as possible.
If you know someone who is expecting twins, be positive and supportive. What ever you do don’t share your worries and concerns. Just be there to help when needed.
What Next?
We hope you will also join us at Helpful By Nature by subscribing to our email list. We would love to hear from you, take your questions and provide answers if we are able. We would also love to share more stories about raising twins. So let us know if that’s a topic that you would like to hear more about.
Until next time,
Gillian (and Andrew)
