What’s all the fuss about a bag of grapefruit and two coat hangers?
By: Louise Brown
Tags: Birth, Twins, Pregnancy

Double denim divas included for attention.

June 2013. It was just before midnight and I was lying on my back, in a brightly lit hospital theatre, legs hoisted into medieval stirrups whilst eight strangers loomed up from between my legs, dutifully telling me their names and roles. I recall thinking a much more profane version of “I’m sorry but much as I admire your adherence to WHO guidelines Barry, Susan, Dave, Delilah, Audrey, Stanley, Pru and Martin, I’m not really taking all this in and can I get on with pushing these babies out now please?”

It was not the first or last time I would realise that having one baby and all the books and forums I had read had not prepared me for the reality of having twins.

No soup for you!

Admittedly, the birth of my precious first born was ludicrous – birthing pool, doula who knitted a silk cap for my newborn as I laboured, dimmed lighting in a palatial NHS birth centre. Later that day I overshared shots of me holding my son like I was Mother Mary herself (if she’d been sat nude in a vat of blood and poo soup). The birthing pool was not to be an option next time. (Incidentally, our first son was then whisked off to NICU due to an infection – come on, every birth has a Tales of the Unexpected twist.)

Shove ‘em in

“There’s one heartbeat… and there’s another heartbeat.” The first shock was at our six week scan. After failed attempts and a miscarriage, we were convinced our last try at IVF would not work at all – neither embryo was B grade let alone A* (or whatever the lettering was), and I feel sure I said something like “Oh, just shove ’em in.” And I remember during the stunned walk from the clinic “Well that hopefully means at least one will survive.” There are many additional risks that Dr Google will have ready for you at every twinge, and worrying about them starts straight away.

Bag of grapefruit and two coathangers

By six months, I was nine months big, by about seven months other people started to openly worry about my size. I was once asked by a bus driver whether I should even be getting on the bus, clearly no have-a-go hero he. I didn’t tell him it felt like I had a large bag of grapefruit between my legs and two coat hangers (not padded) poking out of from under my ribs and I wasn’t entirely sure I could get up the step without my waters breaking or at the very least urinating all over his ticketing area. Instead I reassured him I was fine, smiled and boarded. May have urinated, it’s a bit of a blur now.

What pops out, pops out

This time around my birth plan was two bullet points (+hospital +babies coming out). For good reasons I was told I had to be induced, it was strongly recommended I have an epidural and I was not allowed anywhere near a birth centre. I quietly acquiesced on a lot of stuff that I hadn’t had to consider before. I thought about a C-section but the consultant reassured me that, “Oh, I suspect these two will just pop out.” (Yes, she did say that and no, they didn’t.)

My other favourite inappropriate comment was from a stranger at a bus stop (and one that many twin parents enjoy), “Were they natural?” she asked after cooing over my sleeping babes in their double buggy. Sleep deprived and by nature an oversharer, the blow-by-blow account I gave her on overcoming the stirrups situ to “pop ‘em out” and my ensuing battle with haemorrhoids (that did actually pop out) brought tears to her eyes. Then she explained she meant were they IVF. I told her yes, they were indeed unnatural.

Tough mother

Giving birth to twins is like an endurance event for crazy people that someone else has entered you for. Everything is not twice as hard – it’s four times as hard because you’re twice as tired and there are so many of you to feed and clean and change and change again and get to sleep and feed and change again. You’re exhausted even before you give birth, that massive bag of grapefruits and coat hangers does not allow for much sleep in the final months. And if you’ve had any kind of struggle with fertility or difficult wait for your babies sometimes that can be an extra fillip to you on the tough days, other times it makes you feel even worse.

We wrote a book

Which is why, after my first night’s sleep in twelve months, I decided to write a book, Be Ready to Parent Twins, to help other parents of twins understand how different having twins is from the stories of birth and babies that you’ve read or even experienced before. I approached my co-author, Dr Ella Rachamim, as she, along with some other twin parents, had been such a wonderful help sharing their knowledge and experiences and allowing me to voice my worries, panics and challenges.

What we’ve produced is a book which, alongside solid medical guidance, tells the stories you don’t hear about coping and not coping from us and other parents who birthed, fed and weaned their children in lots of different ways. Our goal was to support parents through the shock and awe of the early days through to the end of their first year and help them to find their own way through the maze of information, anxiety, unwelcome comments and advice.

We are crowdfunding our book through Unbound, and would be delighted if you supported the book in any way you can.