News

8th April 2005

Parents of twins let down by health professionals

Family doctors are failing to offer vital advice and support to parents expecting twins, triplets and more during pregnancy, a national parenting charity has revealed.

Statistics show that the majority of mums and dads quizzed by the Twins and Multiple Births Association ranked general practitioners as the least helpful members of the medical profession.

And nearly half (46 per cent) of all parents said they were not given sufficient help and information from any health professional when told they are expecting a multiple birth.

The survey, conducted in 2004, found 71 per cent of the 1,226 parents questioned complained of a lack of support throughout their pregnancy and just 30 per cent had the opportunity to attend an antenatal class for multiple pregnancy.

Director of Tamba Helen Forbes branded the findings ‘a great concern’. She said parents were asked to give a rating of one to six for consultants, midwives, health visitors, Tamba, local twins clubs and GPs depending on how much support they were offered.

GPs consistently came bottom with scores of five or six and a total of 23 per cent of those surveyed said they were the least helpful.

“We hear about these problems all the time, so although the figures are shocking they are no surprise to us,” she said.

“It is a great concern that people feel they are not getting the support they need from GPs and that they have said they were the least helpful out of the medical profession.”

In the same survey, parents rated midwives highly for the quality of information they gave and in particular breastfeeding support.

Just under 75 per cent of mothers said they had breastfed their twins at some point with 21 per cent continuing to do so for at least six months. Of those that chose not to breast feed, 20 per cent cited lack of support as the reason.

Alice Nicholson, a married mother with TWO sets of twins aged three and one, says she had supportive health professionals from the GP to midwives and health visitors, but felt generally the service as a whole was not geared up for dealing with multiple births.

And Catherine Faughey, who has twins aged 20 months, breastfed her babies for over a year despite some midwives telling her she wouldn’t be able too as she wouldn’t have enough milk.

Tamba is now calling for action to be taken to improve the services provided for parents of multiple births.

Mrs Forbes added: “There is an ever increasing number of women who have twins or triplets and it is important that health professionals know more about how to deal with it and can provide adequate support.

“At the moment there is very little provision for mothers expecting multiple births and that is a worry. We understand that the NHS is under pressure but think that a lot more needs to be done to help parents.”

Office of National Statistics figures show that there were 9,131 multiple births in 2003, the highest number since 1997. And the number of multiple births has increased by 20 percent in the past ten years.

Tamba runs its own support service Twinline, which has recently extended its hours in response to a vote of confidence given by poll respondents who rated it highly.

The helpline is contactable on 08001380509 from 10am until 1pm and then from 7pm until 10pm everyday

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