Breast-feeding might be the place to begin nurturing a story about twins.
“Mine fed every two hours, and it took them one hour each,” said Christine Jennings of Burlington Township, near Philadelphia, the mother of 22-month-old twins, Amanda and Ross. “They were preemies. I knew I would be tired, but I was so tired. . . . All you do is breast-feed the first few months.”
Jaime Hammond of Medford Lakes, Pa., is seven months pregnant and has done a lot of research on what life will be like after Natalie and Vanessa are born. She intends to breast-feed and has been advised by one mother of twins “to not even put a shirt on.”
Jane Raeder, 38, of Lafayette Hill, Pa., breast-fed 7-month-old twins Ben and Jake for just a month and then quit.
“I know a lactation specialist would kill me, but it was wearing me out. I had no energy. It was 24 hours a day, and my husband couldn’t help.”
Feeding is just one example. If having a child can be compared to tossing a grenade at your old life, then having twins is surely a nuclear device. Yet more and more parents are experiencing the special kind of chaos that multiple births bring. That’s leading to more specialized support services and advice.
“It’s not just double the care and work of a single baby, it’s exponential,” said Nancy Bowers, a registered nurse from Atlanta, the mother of twins and the president of Marvelous Multiples, a program to help parents care for themselves and their multiple newborns.
“There are simultaneous needs going on, and that makes the stress level high.”
A spike in stress is not stopping the rate of twin, triplet and quadruplet births from rising significantly in the U.S. From 1980 to 1995, the rise in twins born was 42 percent. For the same period, the growth in triplets and larger broods soared 272 percent. The frequency of twin births jumped from 18.9 to 26.1 per 1,000 live births.
In real numbers, nearly 102,000 children born in 1995 had at least a brother or a sister along for the ride.
The reasons, say Jennings and others, are older women having babies and the increase in high-tech assistance for fertility problems.
Jennings should know. In addition to being a poster woman for the modern mother of two-at-a-time, she is a former labor and delivery room nurse and now coordinates parent-education programs at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. She’s also a teacher in the hospital’s new class for parents-to-be of twins and other multiple births. West Jersey Hospital is another Philadelphia-area hospital with specialized childbirth classes for the expectant parents of twins.
“I’m 43, and I went through almost everything I see in class,” said Jennings, who works part time so that she can care for her children. “I married late in my 30s. I have IVF (in-vitro fertilization) twins. I had a high-risk pregnancy. I had to have bed rest at home. I was in the hospital for 12 days.”
In 1995, 53 percent of twins and 92 percent of triplets were born preterm, or earlier than 37 weeks, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
“Regular childbirth classes don’t address many of the issues that come up for the parents of more than one child,” Jennings said. “For a mother of twins, you’re at a higher risk for complications, like early labor or blood pressure problems, which could affect blood flow to the uterus. . . . The stillborn rate is higher, placental problems are more common and there’s a real concern with how will I get through the birth itself?”
For parents-to-be of twins who had no outside assistance, the news of two arrivals might not come until the second trimester. For the couple who went through processes such as artificial insemination or in-vitro fertilization, the news might come at three, four or five weeks.
More time to be happy and more time to worry, Jennings said.
“You’re told it’s high-risk early,” she said. “You have lots of doctors’ visits, lots of blood work. I had three ultrasounds the first three months. The hormone levels are higher earlier. You get bigger faster, and then come the backaches and the other aches and pains. And you have two kids kicking.”
Another problem with childbirth classes is they often occur during the last trimester of pregnancy, said Jill Glass, maternal and child health coordinator at West Jersey Hospital.
By then, many twins’ moms are at home undergoing bed rest or might be in the hospital. “The course here is designed for the second trimester.”
Pennsylvania and West Jersey Hospitals’ twins classes are based on Marvelous Multiples, created by Bowers. She began in 1992 with one class in Birmingham, Ala. Today, her twins are in 1st grade, and 60 programs are running from Maine to California.
