‘Blessed with a bonus child’: Welcoming one pair of Holles Street’s 190 annual twins

“It was a bit of a shock,” says Mairéad O’Gorman. “We said we’d go for number three and then we had a surprise.”

Mairéad and her husband Mitchell’s twins Robyn and Elliot were born on Tuesday at the National Maternity Hospital on Dublin’s Holles Street, which welcomes about 190 pairs a year.

“We were blessed with a bonus child,” jokes Mitchell, who has had to think practically since learning two children were on the way.

“The fourth person to find out after the sonographer, myself and Mairéad was our car dealer,” he says. “We’d just bought a new car, and obviously we were going to have to hand that back and get something with slidey doors.”

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The couple, who have been together for almost 20 years, married in 2012 and then decided to start a family.

“So we had Eve, and then we had Eli, and then last year we miscarried,” Mairéad says. “This time last year, we were just trying to get over the miscarriage, and now, a year later, here we are.”

Saturday is Twins Day, which dates back to 1976 when the town of Twinsburg in the US state of Ohio began a celebration which has gone on to be the largest annual gathering of twins in the world. So fraternal twins Robyn and Elliot were born just in time, at 37 weeks and two days.

“Robyn came out two minutes before Elliot, and she was crying straight away, and then he came out and there was just a pause when he was doing nothing. You get worried,” says Mitchell.

“They’re both purple, he’s not doing anything, his eyes are closed. And then he just leaves out this roar after a couple of seconds.”

The family are looking forward to the future.

“It’s a great time for them to be alive, and as long as they’re happy and do whatever they want to do in their lives, that’s all you can ask for really,” says Mitchell.

“I haven’t really experienced the two of them crying their heads off together yet.”

Mairéad smiles, adding: “You will. Soon.”

“It’s going to be double everything – double nappies, double trying to get people asleep, double feeding,” she says. “I do wonder if we’ll ever get out again, if we’ll ever get a babysitter.”