Double Trouble: Twins and How to Survive Them

скачать книгу бесплатно


Once a yoga teacher has helped you locate your pelvic floor, find a regular place to do your exercises, such as when sitting at the traffic lights. The only place I could remember was in the bath. Lying on my back, I would do the hold for 10 seconds, release for 10 seconds, hold for 9 seconds, release for 9 seconds, until the water went cold. Those without a yoga teacher can practise by sitting on the loo and holding back their pee intermittently.

Working out

As I have never set foot in a gym, I can’t give any sensible advice on what exercises can and can’t be done in later pregnancy. However, the actress Jane Seymour writes quite comprehensively about her workout regime before the birth of her twin boys Kris and Johnny. Without wishing to pour cold water on her efforts, her impressive gym activity is tempered by the fact that she did go into labour at 34 weeks after the onset of pre-eclampsia. (Her disappointment about being wheeled in for an emergency Caesarean, however, was offset by the surgeon’s flattering remarks as she lay under the knife. In her book Two at a Time the surgeon is quoted as saying, ‘Look at those abdominal muscles – good work, Jane. They look like the muscles of a 20-year-old.’

(#litres_trial_promo) The following excerpt from her punishing schedule carries a warning that you may well feel tired just reading it:

‘My workout stayed essentially the same between 28 weeks and 34 weeks with some important exceptions because of the irritable uterus episode I’d had at 28 weeks. I no longer warmed up on either the recumbent bike or the Stairmaster. I also used stretchy exercise bands instead of the weight machine, and I did exercises seated or lying down instead of standing. Gently, I kept up with my abdominal exercises, even though I had grown so large, although Dr Ross pointed out that if I had experienced pre-term labour, all abdominal exercises would have been out.’

Phew. Cup of raspberry leaf tea, anyone?

Obviously now is not the time to take up jogging, because there is nothing more uncomfortable than your stomach and boobs swinging up towards your face. But for those of you who were runners before your body was invaded, there is little reason why, with the blessing of your doctor or midwife, you can’t carry on. In the Autumn issue of our twins club newsletter, we reported on a 33-year-old marathon runner who became pregnant with twins. After her first antenatal visit she cut down her running from 96 miles a week to around 66 miles, and eased off her pace. The twins grew at a normal rate and the mother stayed healthy, only giving up running three days before the birth. After a planned Caesarean at 36 weeks, she gave birth to twins weighing 4lb 14oz (2.2kg) and 5lb 1oz (2.3kg). Go girl.

Dealing with common complaints

Ranking in order of popularity, from the most popular complaint to the least popular, here are the most common symptoms that 50 twin mothers in our local south-west London area experienced in moderation during their pregnancy. The questionnaire did not include ‘exhaustion’ which was cited by everyone. Suggested remedies are in brackets next to the complaints.

Backache (48% – yoga)

Indigestion (42% – glug Gaviscon, which you can buy or get from your GP on free prescription in industrial sizes to alleviate symptoms)

Sickness (34% – ice cubes, lemon juice and water mouthwashes, boiled sweets and ginger products such as tea and preserves, but not concentrated ginger capsules – all seem to help some but not others.)

Swollen lower limbs (23% – swim or lie down)

Swollen upper limbs (21% – swim or lie down)

Higher blood pressure (5% – lie down and leave work)

FOUR I Shop, Therefore I Am (#ulink_f7bd5a78-320d-52b1-9e38-c680204f0e5f)

When I interviewed the triplet (heroine) mother Valerie Cormack, I asked her what was the hardest part of caring for her babies. I expected a long diatribe about visiting special care units or sleeplessness, but instead she answered: ‘Shopping. There is nothing worse than buying three of the same thing, and then realizing that it was a mistake.’ And this comes from the woman who gave birth to all three of her babies naturally in hospital.

So, let’s get serious about shopping for a moment. After all, you have worked hard for your money, and you don’t want to blow it on something you have no hope of returning to the shop after the babies are born. There is a lot of necessary stuff to buy in preparation for twins – pregnancy clothes, cots and nursery furniture, buggies and bathtime accessories – so there is no escape. You might as well enjoy the experience by starting early and acquiring the catalogues and getting the boring but important stuff out of the way now. Then you will have hours to coo over cashmere booties as the pregnancy wears on, knowing that a telephone call to one of your hundreds of catalogue people will solve any last-minute necessities. Sorted.

Maternity wear for big mothers

The best rule is to avoid the twilight world of non-fashion that is maternity wear until you can no longer go a day without those comfy jersey gussets for the stomach. Before that moment you can make do with the latest fantastic invention from Australia, the Bellybelt, an ingenious device that fits over your normal trousers and allows you to keep within the bounds of normal fashion for a few weeks longer. It sells for £12.95 and the box comes with three sizes of elastic and three different materials – white, black or denim (see www.grobag.com).

However, when the Bellybelt and the size 18s and 20s from your favourite shops no longer fit, you have to give up and call in the brochures. Once you have, and you are wearing your first pair of maternity jeans, you will heave a huge sigh of relief. They will feel so comfortable. You can’t believe why you didn’t succumb to big pants or maternity tights earlier. Don’t worry – your partner will thank you for holding out this long. There is nothing in this world less sexy than a drop-down bra.

Sadly for twin mothers, the day of maternity-wear reckoning will be reached far earlier than for those carrying singletons. But you can at least comfort yourself in the knowledge that you will get far more wear out of them. Also, lest you forget, you will be wearing those same maternity trousers for a good few weeks (or months in my case) after you have had the babies. The sight of a twin mother’s stomach after the birth is best kept under wraps. It will be a while before the diamond in your pierced tummy button is back out on display.

When it comes to buying maternity wear, go only for the ‘capsule wardrobe’. You remember that 90s’ fashion phase that urged everyone to go out and buy dark-coloured tailored basics to wear with T-shirts for power breakfasts and board meetings? Well, it may have dropped off the agenda for London Fashion Week, but it is still vital to your pregnant sense of wellbeing. There is nothing worse than waking every morning and having a clothes tantrum because you can’t face your multicoloured ‘fun’ top. You need to invest in some dark-coloured basics, even if the only power breakfast on the horizon is with your pussycat.

The capsule wardrobe

For your capsule wardrobe, the ‘maternity’ basics are:

Big pants (I suppose thongs are doable under the bump, but all that rubbing is soon going to make you head towards Bridget Jones’s favourite drawer)

Maternity tights (other tights just don’t work)

Maternity drop-down bra (this is for breastfeeding later, but as your boobs will have already gone up a cup size or two, you may as well buy early rather than buy twice)

Maternity jeans (see below)

Maternity stretch trousers (black, don’t be tempted by any fawn or ‘fun’ light colours as they will remain stubbornly in the wardrobe)

Some tops (don’t have to be cut in the maternity bias but may show the unattractive jersey stomach gusset if not)

Two dresses (optional, but dresses are just so much more comfortable by the end, when even the forgiving gusset has a piece of elastic pressing down on your stomach). Dresses, particularly if they are long with long sleeves, need minimum extra layers, which you don’t have in your wardrobe anyway. Plus, with dresses, you can sometimes get away with non-maternity stuff. I wore two Ghost non-maternity dresses right up until my 40th week with the twins, so anything is possible.

The joy of mail order

Whether you live in the city or the country, by the time you have become so pregnant that you don’t feel like moving, or later on a housebound mother, you are ready to discover the joy of mail order. It is part necessity and part fantasy (impossibly clean babies, no hint of baby sick anywhere, being pushed along by beautiful blonde teenage model mothers, no sign of bags under the eyes). Once you have rung for your first catalogue, you will become an addict. It is a perfectly normal symptom of shopping deprivation brought about by being too large to undress in tiny cubicles. Fortunately for you, your addiction will be fed forever more by new catalogues from different baby-related manufacturers arriving on your doorstep unasked for. You may tut about the paper wastage, but before long you will be hooked, flicking through the pages to see the latest baby gizmos.

The upside to mail-order shopping is that you can do it when you are pinned to the bed breastfeeding two babies, and you can shop online when the children are asleep. The downside is that once the babies are born, you are unlikely ever to find an envelope and Sellotape to return anything that didn’t fit. My twins are still waiting to grow into their cute Breton tops, bought by mistake at size six years instead of six months.

The best maternity-wear and baby shops

Blooming Marvellous

(0870 751 8944: www.bloomingmarvellous.co.uk)

Blooming awful name but it boasts the ‘UK’s largest range of maternity wear’ and has some good classic items for late pregnancy, such as large linen shirts that can also be worn afterwards. It is a one-stop shop for your pregnancy capsule wardrobe with a growing newborn section. Just steer away from Womb Song Kit (£49.99). Your babies will never thank you, and that money would be better spent at the Gucci of pregnancy wear – Formes.

Formes

(0208 689 1133: www.formes.com)

Formes is the French maternity-wear company where all pregnant mothers would shop if they were rich celebrities. That doesn’t mean you cannot treat yourself to one item there. And if you do buy only one thing, make it a pair of jeans. A pair bought by a friend for £75 is on its fourth pregnant mother, and they still look great. Women who work in the City should only buy maternity wear from Formes, because they can.

Jojo Maman Bébé

(0870 241 0560: www.Jojomamanbebe.co.uk)

Also French, and a little more classy than bloomingterrible-name. Its website is well-organized and easy to buy from. Its denim jeans are cheaper than its French rival at around £32.99.

Brora

(0207 736 9944: www.brora.co.uk)

This company makes exquisite cashmere baby clothes: cardigans (£45), trousers (£45) as well as hand-knitted baby bonnets (£23), baby booties (£19) and baby mittens (£15). One friend who was given a gift box of trousers and cardy loved the feel of her cashmere baby so much that every night for three months she would wash out the top and bottoms and hang them on a radiator for the next day. Some may be horrified at the thought of spending so much on baby clothes, so this is one to be given as a gift, if anybody’s asking. Yasmin Le Bon, who discovered Brora for her children, never hands on the clothes but recycles them into cushions. If it’s good enough for Yasmin…

Beaming baby

(0800 034 5672: www.beamingbaby.com)

This is a totally organic website offering mainly toiletries for babies – natural bathcare, talcum powder and kits for mothers. It also sells some unusual hand-finished clothes for babies made from organic cotton – its long-sleeved ‘bodies’, sleepsuits and babygros are an environmentally-friendly alternative to the bigger stores.

Mothercare

(0845 330 4030: www.mothercare.com)

Unless you are reading this after a major relaunch, Mothercare seems to me to have gone off the boil in recent years with some frumpy maternity offerings and often poorly-stocked shops. Shame when you consider that it’s the name everyone gropes for when they need anything baby-wise. One pregnant friend became so exasperated with not being able to find a shop assistant recently that she stood in the middle of the store and announced ‘I am here to spend hundreds of pounds with you, please can anyone help me?’ She spent £800 at the store and had to return to the shop when the goods were delivered because they still had their security tags on.

When I contacted Mothercare about these general issues of stock and customer service, they replied:

‘We acknowledge that our performance in these areas has not lived up to the expectations of our customers. We have a new and revitalized senior management team in place that is concentrating its efforts on returning Mothercare to its position of pre-eminence as the number one retailer for parents.’

Watch this space.

Not Mail-order but Worth the Schlep

H&M Hennes – Mama Range

(www.hm.co.uk)

The Hennes maternity line knocks spots off the catalogue stuff price-wise. Pick up basic long-sleeved T-shirts and stretchy trousers for a few quid. It is also much trendier. Think Natalie from All Saints rather than Cherie from Number 10. However, as we go to press, the website only offers a store locator rather than online ordering, so you will need to plan a trip.

Little stuff for tiny babies

You’ll be amazed at how little stuff you need to begin with, particularly if you are breastfeeding. Don’t be seduced by the magazines. Buy as you go along and second-hand from twins club newsletters, if you can. There are some things that only the catalogues sell, however. I’ve listed below the best buys that do the rounds through our local club’s quarterly journal.

The swing chair

This is a battery-powered rocking chair, suitable from birthish up until 25lb in weight. The benefit for a twin mother is that you can put one baby in it, rocking happily away on one of two speeds, with annoying jangly music, while changing the other. The downside is that they take up about as much room as a small helicopter in your living room. Brand new, they cost around £89 from catalogues such as Perfectly Happy People (0870 607 0545: wwwthebabycatalogue.com). Second-hand, they sell for around £50.

The V-shaped cushion

This is used for breastfeeding and propping up one little baby while you feed the other. One twin mother even uses hers to stop her two-year-old falling out of bed (one arm is a pillow, the other a buffer). She also found a rare V-shaped cushion with Velcro straps, allowing her to walk around the house with it strapped on like an ocean-going liner. Poor husband. The V-shaped cushion always comes out as a best buy for twin mothers because it allows you to breastfeed both babies at the same time (the double football hold), no-handed. Even if you bottle-feed, you can prop up both babies facing each other while you hold the bottles. Oh, what versatility! As well as being on sale at WI meetings for oldies who like to read in bed, it is also found at John Lewis stores and catalogues such as Perfectly Happy People (see above).

The baby change station

If you only had one baby, you might get away with not having to invest in a baby change station (the cheapest being a canvas and metal foldaway number costing around £30 in IKEA). However, if you don’t invest in one with twins, you would spend triple the cost at the osteopath after 100 nappy changes in the first week alone. If you can possibly afford it, buying one for upstairs and one for downstairs will also see you through the blizzard of nappies in the first few months.

Bath safety seats

Bathing twins in the early days is a two-person job unless you invest in bath seats. I bought two from Cheeky Rascals (£12.95 mail-order: 01428 682488) and I credit the purchase with helping my twins love water. The seat, which has recently won Parenting magazine Best Buy, is made of moulded plastic and props the baby in a semi-upright position. The baby is supported under the arms and legs, which are free to flail about, but cannot slip downwards. Once the twins get used to the water (my little girl used to scream when first immersed for about a week), they can splash around to their hearts’ content. In the early days, this means you could down a whole cup of tea. Well worth every penny.

The real nappy issue

You may be wondering at this stage what on earth makes one nappy brand better than another (the answer is whichever has a freebie of some wipes attached to them). Or you may be thinking that you’d like to do your bit for the environment and use real nappies. Whatever your view, you are entering a fiercely competitive world where the big brands like Pampers will be vying for your loyalty along with the little local nappy laundering services. Whatever you decide, remember that you will only have time to research the options before the babies are born. After that, it will be whatever the local store has in stock.

Biodegradable disposables

There is only one brand of disposable nappy that is biodegradable, and it is called Nature’s Boy and Girl. They are unisex (useful for boy/girl twins) and sold in all the big supermarkets, but sadly not in smaller chemists. Invented by a Swedish woman called Marlien Sandberg, the nappy is 70 per cent biodegradable, and a new prototype – 100 per cent biodegradable – may even be in production at the time of reading. For those too overstretched to want to wash or fold nappies, these are a good compromise. You are doing your bit for the environment, and can sleep at night knowing that of the 800,000 tonnes of nappy waste collected every year in UK landfill sites, at least your babies’ contributions will be rotting down. The shocking alternative is the knowledge that the very first disposable nappy ever made has yet to biodegrade.

Real nappy laundering agencies

For the first nine months of the twins’ lives, I opted for a nappy laundering service, which delivered 100 nappies for the babies every week and took away the soiled ones. As well as the laundering service, I also rented 12 plastic pants to put the nappies in, and they worked well with no problem of rashes or leakages. I even quite liked the chore of folding these white cotton nappy liners; it gave me a whiff of what it would be like to be a real earth mother. However, my main problem was the smell. The buckets that had to wait for a week for collection began to pong so badly that they eventually had to be put at the end of the garden near the compost. And if I forgot to put the nappy bucket out for collection, then the garden became a horsebox. The total cost was around £8 per week per baby, around the same cost as disposables. For your nearest nappy collection and delivery scheme, call The National Association of Nappy Services (0121 693 4949).

Real nappies to buy

In the year 2000, there were 10 companies selling cloth nappies; today there are about 22. Some mothers go for buying and using the cloth nappies because it works out cheaper in the long run. Friends of the Earth estimate that cloth nappies cost an average of £400 per baby over a two-year period before a baby is potty-trained, including the cost of washing powder, electricity, water and wear and tear (estimated at £40). Disposables cost £1,200 per baby for a two-year period – no small figure when doubled.

These days ‘real nappy systems’, as they are grandly called, have come a long way from the terry-towelling-and-safety-pin days of our mothers. Lively animal prints make them a little more fun to hang out on the washing line, and the Velcro or popper fastenings are a doddle to do. Catalogues such as PHP (0870 6070545), Cheeky Rascals (01428 682488) and Little Green Earthlets (01825 873301: www.earthlets.co.uk) carry a range, but for background information contact The Real Nappy Association (0208 299 4519).

One of the biggest manufacturers, Kooshies (0870 607 0545), often provides a sample pack for interested mothers. Those wishing to turn their interest into a lifetime of placard-waving on behalf of the environment can also get the low-down on the impact of disposables on the planet from the Women’s Environment Network (0207 481 9004).

The wonderful world of double buggies

If you thought buying a car was difficult (am I a hatchback sort of person or a sports car kind of girl?), then the double buggy showroom will send you rushing to the nearest shrink. Double buggies seem to cost about as much as a car, need at least an O-level in engineering to put up and down, and generate very little interest in the male species. If you do have a man with strong opinions about what you should buy, think twice about doing as you’re told against your better judgment. Exactly how much pushing up and down the pavements and hills will he be doing with it? A Saturday stroll is quite different from a slog back from Sainsbury’s with the weekly shop.

One reason why the world of double buggies is so complicated is because manufacturers are always bringing out new pushchairs with fabrics and features that instantly make last year’s model look like stale buns. We have a video in our twins club library called Coping with Twins (don’t bother, it’s from the 1970s), which shows a mother trying to ram a new double buggy through her front door. Under the helpful banner of ‘make sure your double buggy can fit through an average door’, this poor woman is trying to negotiate a vehicle the size of two shopping trolleys up the front step. Meanwhile, her twins are lying down on their fronts in the buggy, with their heads bobbing up and down like nodding dogs.

In a recent local twins club survey, two mothers groaned about how the Mothercare Urban Detour model was 82 cms wide and didn’t fit through their front doors. The thought of unloading your twins in the rain, and taking the shopping off the back of the buggy while finding the keys in the bottom of your handbag is no small consideration, so don’t rely on manufacturers to build to standard-width doors. At the risk of making the book instantly out of date, because by the time you read this some company will have just brought out a model with a pump-action pellet gun to zap other buggies out of the way, let me offer the results of our own twins club survey a little later on (see pages 56–7). In defence of being yesterday’s news, note that manufacturers’ ‘new ranges’ tend to offer cosmetic changes, such as different fabrics, rather than radical design improvements.

The first three months

The pram you need for the first three months of your babies’ life is quite different from the one you need for the next two years. Some manufacturers do try and get round this by getting their sitting-up versions to lie flat, but it can often look like a compromise. Although you will be focused on the babies as tiny little beans that need protecting, if you are buying new, do look ahead to the moment they can sit up – around six months.

Many twin mothers get round the problem by renting a pram (not particularly cheap) or borrowing for those first three months, and then buying the three-wheeler of their choice when the babies are six months old. For the first three months you will want your babies to be lying together, replicating the experience in the womb, so that they sleep more soundly comforted by each other’s presence. For that reason, old-fashioned prams – or even single prams for a month or two – often do the trick of keeping them tucked up cosily as twins. Once the babies are sitting up, a whole new world of buggies open up to you, and these buggies can then last the next two years.

Buy second-hand

One of the advantages of living on our crowded, small island is that neighbours and friends are always keen to offload equipment to make space in their shed. This is particularly true when your news of expecting twins reaches the outside world. Offers will come from the most unexpected sources – I was offered a front-and-back buggy in shocking purple and green from my sister-in-law’s former au pair’s current employer (see what I mean about ‘unexpected’). Then a friend turned up with a side-by-side Maclaren umbrella double buggy. As it turned out, both were useful. The front and back one lasted no more than six months because it became too heavy to lift up and down pavements. The second side-by-side number is still brought out for emergencies (and I was interested to see in our twins club survey that 45 per cent of mothers had a Maclaren as a second buggy).