 Call
for back-up - why twin mums must learn a new skill
Twins mums must adapt to many things but, above all Susannah Peel
mum of twins, must learn to ask for help. We would rather admit to having
plastic surgery or an illicit affair before admitting we need help to
raise our kids!
Multi-tasking down to a fine art>> Say
the unsayable>> Multiples multiply
mess>> Activate 'stranger support'>>
Multi-tasking down to a fine art
Twin mums need to be adept at many things. Many of us have 'multiple'
multi-tasking down to a fine art; breastfeeding two babies while reading
to an older child and massaging a woeful pet (or husband !) with one foot;
rocking one twin to sleep in a stroller and another in a sling while making
supper and catching up with a friend on the phone.
But there's one thing we all really need to learn but universally struggle
to achieve. And that's the ability to ask for help.
Independence and self-sufficiency count for so much in our culture that
we only have to hear the words 'get help' whispered and we break out in
guilt pangs and stress hives. We're conditioned by the images of tv and
celebrity mag mums to think that we must cope; our friends would admit
having plastic surgery or an illicit affair before they'd admit needing
help to raise their kids.
Yet there's nothing to be gained by maintaining this mule-headed position
- and quite a lot to be lost. The people who really suffer for our stubborn,
stiff-upper-lipped insistence on going it alone are the twins and other
children in the family. They bear the brunt of an exhausted, irritable
and stressed-out mommy.
Say the unsayable
There are just two steps to learning how to accept help. First accept
the need for it, second practise asking for it.
As Emma Mahony says in her book 'Double Trouble' "Because Western civilization
is the only culture in the world that expects new mothers to cope on their
own, all of us doing identical jobs in our identical houses with our identical
time-saving machine, I am going to say the unsayable. Under no circumstances
should you plan to take twins home and cope on your own".
Think about it, if takes two parents to raise one baby, then surely it
should take four to raise twins. Face it - you're outnumbered - accept
help.
Now all you have to do is practise asking for help. Ideally this is a
skill, like pelvic floor exercises, that should be practised throughout
twin pregnancy. Use your vast pre-delivery size to your advantage. Get
people to help you with shopping, chores, unfinished household jobs. At
this stage most people will do anything for you. Usually they'll do it
quickly too and make a fast getaway in case you go into labor on their
watch! Use this.
In fact, at any time during the next three years you can play the 'Mum
of Twins' card to get help, if only you practise dealing this card out.
When a friend comes round and you haven't shovelled out the lounge that
morning play the harassed twin mum card and she'll have her sleeves rolled
up before you can say "my house is a skip".
Multiples multiply mess
 While
pregnant, or if you're already down and dirty in the twin trenches, accept
that you need a lot of help in the 'early daze' . Organize a cleaner.
Believe me, at first you're not going to have the time to clean the house
yourself. By the time you do, two small people will be messing it up so
badly it will just look as if you don't have time to clean. Fact. Multiples
Multiply Mess. Most people would think, two toddlers, twice the mess.
Wrong. Two toddlers, at least three times the mess. Because while you're
clearing up the mess that the first one's made, not only does the first
one have the chance to go off and make more mess, but the second has a
longer time to make more of the mess he was making while the first one
made a mess. And that's going to take you even longer to clear up! I found
this principle applied to many things in life with twins! If you already
have a cleaner ask her if she can increase her hours for a few months.
If hiring a cleaner try to get one who already has children of her own,
particularly if these are your first children. Having a couple of hours
of daily support from another mother during the transition to new mom
will be invaluable and, apart from the fact that a cleaner with kids is
less likely to be squeamish about pools of sicky clothes, you'll soon
be comparing notes on diaper rash and the texture of poo ! (You wait and
see!) Another upside of getting a cleaner with kids is that there will
no doubt be many days when scrubbing the garbage can is preferable to
changing yet another diaper. A cleaner with an experienced pair of maternal
hands probably won't mind swapping jobs with you for a morning.
Of course when hiring help cash can be an issue. If you get given financial
help, by grandparents, for instance, when the twins arrive, seriously
consider using it to hire help. Tessa's parents were unable to take much
time out from their publishing firm when her twins, Daisy and Bella were
born. "They sent us a check and were happy about us using it for whatever
we needed at the time. What I felt I really needed was someone to come
in and clean up while I spent time with the babies. With the money they
sent we were able to hire a housekeeper for the next three months and
it saved my life!"
If you really can't afford hired help don't do without, work round it.
You have years to pay back the favors, but right now you and the babies
really need them. Anyone is fair game, relatives, friends, neighbors,
health visitors, young teenagers who want to earn a bit of pocket money
- absolutely anyone with two arms who can hold a baby for just a few minutes
while you whip up some Formula, change a dirty nappy or just go to the
lavatory! If friends are going to visit make absolutely sure you plan
it - never, never, at nap time, but at what you know will be difficult
times with the babies - the hour before morning nap, lunchtime, teatime,
bath time, early evening. If you can make even one of these days easier
on yourself you're doing well.
Activate 'stranger support'
When I say learn to accept help, I mean any, but any, sort of help. I
perfected a technique of circling the seating area of our local shopping
centre at around baby-feeding time. Knowing the alternative would be to
be cramped in the parent's room (only ever large enough for one mother,
one baby and a single stroller) with one happily feeding baby and one
screaming, purple, hungry baby. I would select a likely looking mature
lady, position myself next to her while I started to feed the first, and
wait for the inevitable offer to take over the second when he started
screaming. Worked like a charm. I called this Activating Stranger Support.
One of the most important things you can do to help yourself is to surround
yourself - in your neighborhood, your town, on the phone and the internet
(join www.TAMBA.org.uk) , with other twin mums. Find them at your antenatal
class, go up and talk to them at hospital appointments (although make
sure they're expecting twins before you bring up the subject - not just
enormous!), I have made at least one lifelong twin mum friend from such
beginnings. I stopped her in the street. Do likewise. Invite a twin mum
you pass to sit with you at the nearest coffee shop for five minutes -she's
probably been dying to come over and talk to you. If you get on at any
sort of level arrange to meet again. Nobody knows what you're going through
as well as other twin mums do. They might not be the sort of people you
would have chosen as friends at any other time, but concentrate on the
similarities, not the differences. The central fact in their lives is
that of raising twins and this gives you more in common than almost any
other group of people. When your sister-in-law, friend or neighbor is
coping with their 'easy' singleton you two will find immense solace, comfort,
support, and likely lifelong friendship in your very own 'twin bond'.
These friends will cry with you, laugh with you, pick you up when you're
down and despairing, be of untold practical help, support you emotionally
and make you feel 'normal' on days when you are feeling like the only
spaced out, poo-covered, porridge-daubed freak automaton on earth ! What
more could you ask!
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