Category: Twins

Third Kids, Sixth Kids and Last Kids

My youngest daughter, Charlotte, just started nursery school.  She attends the same school my twins did, who are six years older than she is.  When the twins started, I was grateful for the phase-in period, where caregivers had to stay in the back of the room for the first few sessions, all of which were shorter than the full 2 hour 45 minutes.  I was not sure they were ready to be dropped off – it seemed like a big transition for them and for me.

This time around, when I got the phase-in schedule for Charlotte, I wondered aloud to my husband why we could not just drop her off for the whole session the first day. He reminded me of how grateful I had been with the twins in 2007, and that she is actually three months younger than they were when they started. But even he, as the primary caregiver, is willing to drop her off much more readily than he was the twins.

This third child seems to benefit from our experience and also maybe suffer a bit.  It’s a strange brew of impatience and wisdom and jaded parenting.  Continue reading Third Kids, Sixth Kids and Last Kids

Naming Twin A and Twin B, Too Soon

The day after my twins were born, my mom handed me the birth certificates the nurse had brought in earlier. I had put them aside, too consumed with the status of my tiny preemies, a few floors down from me in the neonatal intensive care unit, their tiny bodies engulfed in tubes, where they would stay for two months. “They cannot be Parker A and Parker B forever,” my mom said to me now, referring to the nomenclature doctors use for twins in utero and in the NICU. Those little beings in the incubators did not seem real to me at that moment, but she was, obviously, right.

I realized I had no second name, first or middle. In fact, I had no middle name for the first twin. All I had was Natalie. Continue reading Naming Twin A and Twin B, Too Soon

Debunking Twin Myths

Debunking Twin Myths

Published in Huffington Post

Twins for Kate? The princess’s hyperemesis gravidarum (a condition worthy of further research) has led to speculation that she is having twins. It is true that a multiple pregnancy is associated with a 7.5% increased chance of HG. My own anecdotal evidence is a bit different — I had significant nausea and vomiting with both of my pregnancies, and it was actually worse with my singleton the second time around than my first twin pregnancy. But, people are speculating about where the royal baby was conceived, what the princess should eat, the name of the royal baby, the maternity styles we will see, so it is not surprising that our endless appetite for royal gossip on both sides of the pond has fueled twin talk.

With this speculation about twins, though, comes the misconceptions about twin zygosity and twin inheritance that have persisted (she could have twins because William’s uncle Charles has identical twins!), even among skilled medical professionals, even as twins have become much more common, increasing 76% over the past 30 years to 3.3% of births in the U.S. Continue reading Debunking Twin Myths

Should Twins Be Separated in School?

The Motherlode blog grappled with this, and while my emphatic answer was yes, as pointed out in the blog, many adult twins said they wish they had not been separated.  My twins would have never wanted to be separated – they were 5 years old and they had spent virtually their entire lives together – so I am glad NYC DOE made this decision for me.  As I said in my comments to the post, my twins made great strides apart, and though it is much more confusing for us as parents to deal with double sets of instructions and trips and worksheets that are similar enough to make one crazy, it is much better for them to be separate during the school day.