Having twins rocked my world, I’m not going to lie. I never considered twins a possibility when I thought about starting a family and even skipped all the sections on twins in my prenatal books until I found out it was happening to me. Only weeks after my husband and I deciding we were going to start a family, I became pregnant. 10 weeks after that, we found out it was twins. I was shocked, surprised, scared, and any number of S words you can use to describe ones emotions. I kept telling myself that since these twins were natural, I was going to be spared from the laundry list of twin pregnancy risks you are told about. “It was meant to be” was my mantra for 38 weeks and I whole-heartily believe it.
Pregnancy was not what I would call easy, but looking back, it was not terrible either (likely because I do not know any different). I had morning (noon and night) sickness for 18 weeks, I had weeeeeeks of feeling really great, and then I had 3 weeks of bed rest to keep my little guys cooking away as long as possible. Because both babies were breech, I ended up having a c-section at 38 weeks despite my being a student of the Bradley method. My c-section experience was not textbook, I am sad to say, and I ended up hemorrhaging after delivery. Although it was scary at the time, I recovered quite well and have been assured that it was a flukish thing that can happen when you have twins and is not likely to happen if there are future pregnancies.
Now that my guys are 15 months old, my husband and I are starting to reflect on whether or not we should increase the size of our family. I never thought I would be asking myself this question after only one pregnancy. Because I waited until after I finished my PhD and post doc to get pregnant, I figured I would pop out two kids, one right after the other, to make up for not getting pregnant in my 20’s. (Turns out- this is what happened but instead of 1.5 years between kids, there is 1.5 minutes, ha!). I pictured myself having two kids but I thought I would have to have two pregnancies to get them. Now that I have twins, I am wondering if we should roll the dice again and try for more children. I know it is commonplace to be pregnant while you are raising a toddler but, in truth, it scares me. I am (worrying) wondering how you effectively parent twin toddlers while creating the life of a third? How do you start the clock again on sickness, tiredness and breastfeeding baby(ies?) right when your toddlers are bursting with energy? How do you change your parenting techniques to raise a singleton when you are so used to parenting twins?
Deciding whether or not to have children is a very personal decision and I am not asking to have that debate. I am, however, trying to explore the worries that come with being twin parents who are thinking about adding other children to the family. How do you do it?