Twin Pregnancy

If I had a dollar or a pound for every time someone said to me “two for the price of one” when referring to my twins, I would actually be able to afford them!

Please don’t misunderstand me, I truly love having twins and in truth I have two sets so I am well qualified to talk about the costs of having them.

Twins are most definitely not “two for the price of one”.  Twins are costly in many ways not only financially but in time, productivity and other such resources.

As a parent of baby twins you will have little time to do much else other than care for the needs of your babies.   The time constraints Twins bring to their parents equals lack of productivity so if like us you are self employed and trying to work from home you don’t manage it too successfully!

You will only believe me when I say they take up all your time if you already have them.  Often the father of Twins needs to be hands on during those early days which in means he spends less time working and earning a living.

It’s a time consuming business keeping up with their feeding demands initially and following their sleep patterns achieving very little sleep yourselves.  Everything you do takes longer with two babies.

We had twins for the second time around only 2 years ago and they have definitely added enormous pressure to our family. It doesn’t start when they are born it starts during the pregnancy.  Often the pregnancy itself can put pressures on the expecting family particularly if the pregnancy is high risk and you need extra antenatal care and ultrasounds.  We were on weekly ultrasounds for nearly the duration of the pregnancy which meant we both lost a days work every week.  Trust me these antenatal visits and twin ultrasounds take a lot of time.  We had to travel to a specialist fetal unit in London and wait a couple of hours sometimes to be seen if the hospital were running late due to emergencies.  The scan itself can take an hour or more if the babies decide to play up and then you have to battle the traffic home again.

There is a high risk that twins will be born prematurely often resulting in a stay in the Special Baby Care Unit or Neonatal Unit.  This happened to us which meant we had half our family in the hospital and the other half at home.  Juggling the visits and care of your newborn twins that you obviously want to be involved with and managing the existing children at home is a really difficult time and we needed extra support from grandparents.  Once again, it meant that the father in the family couldn’t work for a period of time.

It’s hard enough to manage when family life is running smoothly but you only need an unexpected event such as illness or a broken bone in the family to send things spiralling and leaving the job at hand unmanageable for one adult.  I speak from experience.  It seems that whenever one of the children gets sick it sweeps through the rest of the family taking around two weeks for everyone to be over it.

We had a particularly unpleasant virus a year ago which got to the adults resulting in flu like symptoms.  At one point, I had to take to my bed yet 3 of the children needed medical assistance also.  I had to get myself and 3 children to see the GP.  I was in no fit state to drive so my husband drove me and the 3 sick children (one 6 year old and 18 month old twins) whilst Nanny stayed at home with the well child.  We asked if the doctor could come out but they wouldn’t accommodate us.

Of course, you manage and we are lucky we have the assistance of grandparents and for some families it’s even harder so I am not complaining but I am making the point that it is far from easy.   There have been occasions where it has been easier to keep the older twins home from school rather than having one child at school and 3 at home ill and not being able to manage the school run.

You can see that much of your time is spent catering for your children leaving very little time for work or adult time.  It is a difficult pattern to break, the more children you have the more money you need which often means both parents need to work.

If you need to arrange childcare in order for you to work you are going to realise that it’s a huge expense with twins.  You do not get a “buy one place, get one free place” at nursery.  You may get a slight sibling reduction rate but not always.  Often it makes no sense for the mother to work because the salary pays for the childcare so in fact you are only working to pay for someone else to look after your children.

There is no extra help available in the UK with the cost of having twins and there should be.  The initial outlay with twins is expense enough with the double requirements but the ongoing expense of nappies and baby formula is very costly.

Twins receive the same child benefit as a regular set of siblings so one twin becomes the older child and the other twin becomes the younger child – of course this is not exactly true and could be classed as discrimination between twins.

Then there are the added expenses that come with education.  If you want your twins to start preschool prior to the government funded sessions you have double the bill which is sometimes unaffordable.  Then during primary school you have double the costs of uniforms, dinner money and school outings.  Yes there are many parents with more than one child at school but often the bill doesn’t happen at the same time as school outings are spread out over the course of the school year and different school years go at different times.

One of the larges expenses is the family car.  If like us you already have 2 children prior to expecting twins you will need a bigger car.  The regular family saloon will no longer accommodate your family.