This week I took the girls to a twins and multiples playgroup. And I also had some time alone with Lara, which is a rare event. This week was a week for reflecting on the shared experience of life as a twin (and the parent of twins) and experiencing what being a parent of one might be like.
The twins playgroup was actually similar to any other playgroup: little children and babies of various ages playing in the sandpit, some driving child-sized plastic cars, others drawing on an outside blackboard with chalk. It wasn’t even like those documentaries you see on TV about twin gatherings where everyone has a pair who they look exactly like. Lara and Rhea and my friend who also has identical twin girls (hers are 6 months old) were the only identical twins in a group of around twenty children and babies. If you didn’t know it was a twins’ playgroup you probably wouldn’t have realised for a while.
I didn’t really chat to any of the other mothers about their experience being the parent of twins, though I did hear a conversation about how negative people can be in public when they see twin babies, and I experienced that myself sometimes (‘there’s two of them – Oh God!’). The girls had a good time – the facilities were great and it was well-run, with craft activities, time around a parachute just like they do at toddler gym and a story, as well as unstructured play – but I’m not sure that I’ll be going back soon. My local playgroup is giving me enough support and it’s just down the road instead of a long drive away. For the girls, interacting with my friend’s baby twin girls might normalise the experience of being a twin in society, though for them being a twin is normal and not having a twin is the puzzling state of affairs.
The times I have spent alone with one or other of them are rare: sometimes Rhea wakes up up to an hour before Lara, mostly after a lunchtime siesta, so I can feed her and give her individual attention which feels luxurious and somehow so much easier than managing two. I remember once taking Lara with me to look at second-hand gro bags about a year ago, and while waiting for the family to arrive home we watched a couple kicking a ball on an oval, and they encouraged Lara to play with them in the lengthening shadows of a late afternoon.
On Wednesday Lara fell over at toddler gym then apparently threw up four times in the afternoon with Heidi, and the 1800 health help line recommended that she be taken to Emergency immediately, necessitating the girls to be split up as Rhea (who was distraught that she couldn’t come) stayed home with Steve.
Lara threw up a fifth time in the car. I changed her clothes when we arrived and carried her inside, clutching my bag of supplies. We stood for almost half a hour like that, me holding her while we both checked out others waiting to be seen: a five-year old girl similarly being carried by her mother, a young woman I have seen around in hospital and in town before, who has a mental illness and is very overweight, and a room full of people most of whom looked absolutely fine. Lara looked fine as well but was pale.
Eventually we were seen by a nurse and almost immediately taken through to the Emergency ward where we were seen by a doctor. He was obviously bemused by the concept of a toddler gym (I could see that he thought I was one of those pushy mothers who get their babies and toddlers in to structured educational activities way too early). After taking Lara’s history including her birth weight but not including registering that she is a twin (which I had told the nurse earlier), he diagnosed her with a virus without any head injuries, indicating that she would be given some rehydrating solution and a small tablet to calm her stomach and she would remain under observation for ‘an hour or two’ (this was at 9pm) and if she didn’t throw up again in that time we could go home. He encouraged her to have a breastfeed so we settled down on the bed for a long and dozy feed, punctuated by two sugary orange cordial-like drinks in a Styrofoam cup which she polished off very efficiently with a straw (‘can I have another one?’). It was all rather cuddly: as if we were marooned on a bed together in an ocean of beeping machinery, coughing babies, rushing staff and idle patients, seeking refuge from the harsh fluorescent lights in closed eyes and each other.
We were discharged just after 10pm with a ‘you can take your baby home now.’ I was exhausted but Lara seemed full of energy, no doubt from all the sugar. ‘That was fun,’ she said as we made our way to the carpark in the dark. Whether this was because of the adventure of it, or all the attention, or the special drink, or the extra breastfeed, or having some time with Mum alone, or because of all of these factors, I will probably never know (Lara said it was the drinks). I did enjoy spending some time just with her.
Final thoughts on twins and singles? Being a twin is very special. Some twin parents’ experiences are similar to those of other parents and others aren’t. Everyone is different, and wrangling toddlers, however many of them there are, is not easy. But if you can find that delicate balance of time with each of them, time with your partner and with yourself, and time together, with adequate help and support, it’s indescribably rewarding.
