Bringing the twins home

For young toddlers, the arrival of not one but two siblings can be tough, but it need not lead to trouble, writes AOIFE CARR

THE DAY AFTER I gave birth to my twins at the end of October last year, a small girl came to visit me in hospital. A range of emotions flickered across her face as she came into the room – excitement, curiosity, confusion – before her brows rushed together and she sternly announced to the babies “My mammy” while climbing firmly on to my knee. It didn’t bode well.

My two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, resplendent in the Halloween costume that she had refused to take off for most of the month, had been well prepared. I’d read the books, got advice from experienced parents of twins and handed over yet more money to the Dora industry for a book in which the squeaky heroine’s mother has twins.

I wasn’t holding either baby when she arrived, she received a present from each twin and had “bought” a soft toy for both. And yet how can you fully prepare a toddler for the enormity of two babies joining the family?

It takes skill and insight to balance the needs of twins with other members of the family, says Dr Carol Cooper, author of Twins and Multiple Births: The Essential Parenting Guide from Pregnancy to Adulthood. A GP and mother of twins, she stresses the importance of how you break the news about the babies to your toddler.

“Avoid telling him he is getting two babies to play with. That won’t be happening for quite a while. Telling him he’s getting two babies because he’s ‘such a good boy’ isn’t advisable either. He will blame himself if anything goes wrong,” she says.

“Just be matter of fact about it. Mummy is having two babies. Remind him that he is special and give him lots of your time. When the babies come home, try not to complain about how busy or tired you are. You don’t want your older child to associate them with negative emotions.”

Cooper says the toddler will see the amount of attention the babies receive, so being a baby can suddenly seem very attractive. So make being the older child attractive – let him stay up later than the babies, give him a choice in things, allow him to pick what clothes he will wear. Get him involved with the babies and make sure visitors don’t ignore him in their desire to coo over the twins.

“Sibling rivalry can strike at any time. Your toddler may regress if he has been toilet trained, become faddy with food or start having sleep problems. If you’re aware of the signs you can give him the right kind of attention to head it off,” she adds.

Caroline Norman’s son Seán was two when she gave birth to twins Callum and Evan. A twin herself, Caroline was delighted to find out she was expecting twins, but admits to moments of being terrified about how she was going to cope with two babies and a toddler.

“No matter how crazy things were in the early days, I always made sure he had a half-hour of my undivided attention at bedtime. It was so important to him to have a story and a cuddle without me holding a baby,” she says.

“And even when I was dealing with one of the babies during the day I talked to him constantly. I might have been changing a nappy, but to Seán I was having an in-depth conversation with him about Lego.”

To any prospective parents of twins with other children at home, Norman stresses the old reliables – being organised and getting the babies into a routine.

“Having a routine makes things easier. If you know what you are supposed to be doing at a particular time then you can cater for the older child’s needs too.

“For example when it came to feeding the babies, I took time to lay things out for Seán on a table near me before I began the feed – his drink, a few treats, a jigsaw, a book. Or I’d discuss what DVD he’d like to watch.

“You have to concentrate on one thing at a time. It doesn’t matter if the babies are screaming. Taking the time to get Seán sorted out before concentrating on the twins meant less chance of a feed being interrupted and he didn’t feel excluded.

“Whether you’re bottle or breastfeeding, it won’t be a good feed for anyone if you’re stressed or flustered.”

There are 21 months between Elaine Kinsella’s eldest daughter Niamh and her twins, Ciara and Sadhbh.

“It was tough initially. My husband went back to work after a week and a half. I was lucky in that I had great family back-up,” she says.

“Someone came every morning so I could have a shower and get dressed and another came in the afternoon. Niamh was taken on outings.”

The family went through a challenging time when Niamh became jealous of the twins.

“There was a bit of slapping and pushing. I tried to understand that it was coming from frustration, that she’d had me all to herself before these interlopers came,” says Kinsella.

“I did my best to distract her, took a few deep breaths and just hoped it would pass. It eased off as they got older and became real people that she could boss around.

“There is always that guilt that you’re splitting yourself in three, that you’re not being fair to the twins as they don’t get the attention a single child would.

“But you can’t give them that. You hope that there will be some gain for them, that it is character building, that it will foster independence. At least you tell yourself that!”

In the end I was amazed by my own daughter’s acceptance of the twins. Apart from a few hiccups with toilet training, some carefully timed tantrums and the occasional vigorous “hug”, her love and interest in them grows daily.

On a few days away with me last month she asked on the second evening when she was going home. “I miss my Lily and my Joe,” she said.

There were 1,105 sets of twins, 26 sets of triplets and one set of quadruplets born in Ireland in 2007, the latest year for which statistics are available (Source: CSO).

Identical twins occur when a fertilised egg splits in two. Non-identical or fraternal twins

arise from two separate eggs.

Non-identical twins are more common if there are twins on the mother's side of the family.

Identical twins are random, comprising one in three of all twin births. They are always the same sex.

The chances of having twins rises steadily as the mother gets older.

Women are more likely to have twins the more children they have.