Double Trouble: Twins and How to Survive Them. Emma Mahony

twins in the family.’ Jake asked his father what ‘twins’ meant. ‘It’s very special,’ said Paul, in twinshock himself but choosing his words carefully, ‘there’s not going to be one baby, but two!’ Jake promptly burst into tears, howling: ‘But Daddy, I don’t want two babies, I only want one.’

      Telling the office

      There is only one good rule when it comes to the office: tell them as late as you can get away with (which won’t be that late on with twins). If you are someone who likes to be the centre of attention, then blurt the news out as early as you like. However, the rest of us will find a twin pregnancy a rude awakening. It is the equivalent of dressing up in a clown outfit and wearing a big red nose.

      From the moment everyone knows in the office, you will spend the rest of the run-up to maternity leave answering questions on whether you have chosen names, found out sexes, or, worse, how cousin Ethelberga had twins and was committed to a psychiatric hospital shortly after. Nobody will be interested in how well you gave that presentation, or took the minutes of the meeting, only in the gusset of your elasticated trousers. If you want to be taken seriously, don’t let on until the most tactless person finally asks. Then you know that you can hide it no longer, and the truth will out. By then you will have your handbag ready on the desk to swat the next person who makes a bad joke. Go in hard to deflect the more cautious jokers out there.

      Scans, scans, scans

      It is well worth making friends with the staff in the ultrasound department because you are going to see a lot of them by the end of your pregnancy. A box of Quality Street never goes amiss. Once they have spotted twins, they’ll probably expect you to come in every fortnight after 28 weeks (just when you don’t feel like moving far), as well as having the usual 12-week and 20-week scans. What they are checking for is how the twins are growing and whether they are lying head down or head up, which will make a difference to the birth. Particularly with identical twins sharing a placenta, they are looking to see whether one of the twins takes the lion’s share of the food (twin-to-twin transfusion, a great name for a ’70s rock band). In the unlikely event that there is a dominant and greedy twin, they may suggest delivering the babies ahead of time. One friend of mine was told by the sonographer that she could continue with her identical-twin pregnancy without being induced because the twins were exactly the same weight at around 5lb. When born, one twin was over 7lb – two pounds heavier than the original estimate. It turns out that they measured the same twin twice.

      So, scans may look like a precise science, but they aren’t. Sexes are wrongly reported, anomalies not picked up, and suggested birth weights are often wildly inaccurate. All this human error is further confused by giving you probability equations to do in your head, when everyone knows pregnant women can’t do maths.

      ‘Excuse me, is a one in 500 chance in the Nuchal Translucency test a good result or a bad result? Does that mean that if I have 499 children, the 500th may have Down’s syndrome? Or will it mean that one of my twins will have it, and the next 199 sets of twins I produce won’t? But won’t I be given another nonsensical probability equation at those subsequent pregnancies? Why can’t someone just say “yes” or “no”? Anyway, we’ve already decided that if we do have a Down’s baby we are carrying on with the pregnancy. Which begs the question: why are you scanning me in the first place?’ This is what I would like to have said to the sonographer. Instead, like thousands of pregnant women, I just nodded and felt a little scared.

      If you do feel anxious at the prospect of a scan, take your partner, mother or girlfriend with you. They can listen while you feel fearful. And, if you are unhappy about any scan diagnosis, ask to be scanned again by the head of ultrasound in the hospital. Scans are so often wrong, they are not worth losing sleep over.

       TWO What Flavour Are They?

      Okay, I promised in the Introduction that I wouldn’t befuddle you with words like ‘monochorionic’ and ‘dizygosity’, but the time has come to get the dictionary out. You may as well get a handle on what flavour your twins are, because throughout your and their life, plenty of people will try to tell you differently. You will be amazed at how many intelligent people were obviously sound asleep during their biology lessons.

      All twins are identical (not)

      People desperately want to believe that all twins are alike. There is some deep-seated desire in the human soul that needs to believe this. It is not a rational thing. Perhaps it is steeped in our ancient tribal belief that we must hunt in identical pairs. Or maybe it’s a more modern, narcissistic view that when we die, a clone of ourselves will continue to carry on our important genetic heritage and be available for medical science when needed. Some people will even argue with you that ‘your twins are not proper twins’ unless they are identical.

      This means that if you have fraternal (non-identical) twins (another misnomer to make all twins sound like brothers), you will often be asked ‘are they identical?’ Even if you have boy and girl twins, and the girl is standing in pigtails and a dress and the boy is brushing mud off his football kit, the same stupid question will be asked again and again. And don’t be fooled by the intelligence of the interlocutor. My headmaster asked my brother and I the very question in front of the whole school when we went up to receive two different awards at an end-of-term ceremony. In this instance I refrained from my stock answer (‘No, he has a willy and I don’t’). However, I highly recommend this one for closing the subject quickly.

      If you have non-identical girl twins, or non-identical boy twins, you may need to engage in a brief biology lesson, particularly when your answer of ‘No’ will be met by disbelief. ‘No, they came from two separate eggs and two separate sperms,’ is usually pitched at the right level. Most people’s eyes will glaze over at the mention of zygosity.

      The truth, however, is a little more complicated. And if you only read the following once in your life, it will give you some insight into why twins are so endlessly fascinating to the medical establishment.

      Boy/Girl Twins

      Girls and boys cannot be identical. Nobody mistakes a brother and sister for each other, so why do people mistake boy/girl twins? Statistics¹ show the national average for boy/girl twins to be 33 per cent of all fraternal twin births. Expect around 100 per cent of the population to ask you ‘Why don’t they look the same?’ Women are more likely to have fraternal twins if there is any incidence of twins on their mother’s side (not their father’s).

      Non-identical Girl/Girl or Boy/Boy twins

      Statistics also show that 33 per cent of all non-identical twins are two-egg girl/girl combinations, and the other 33 per cent are two-egg boy/boy combinations. These twins will show the normal sibling differences in temperament, intelligence, social interests and choice of pop music. Unlike their identical counterparts, where studies have shown twins to co-operate more with each other, fraternals are, if anything, more competitive than other siblings. This is not a given – again it’s back to temperament – but it is worth preparing for, especially in toddlerhood (where buying two identical ride-on cars will save you having to shout constantly ‘SHARING, for God’s sake!’). Competitiveness among twins is not that surprising when you consider they have to compete for everything from day one, from mother’s milk to parental attention.

      Nor should acquiring a competitive edge be considered a downside. My twin brother went on to win a bronze medal at the Olympic Games in modern pentathlon (running, riding, swimming, fencing and shooting). I am sure he honed his skills in the back garden while running away from me in my nurse’s outfit.

      Identical twins

      Identical