Ah! So as you may have noticed in my sidebar (if you actually come to this site and don't just read in a reader of some sort) I have decided to join the NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month -- a spinnoff of the more, erm, hardcore "National Novel Writing Month", of which I definitely have no desire to partake in).
Anyway. This means I ought to post every day, which I had forgotten about today until RIGHT NOW, when I was intending to be heading to bed. So I am going to cheat and copy something I had written somewhere else, in response to this question:
"If someone (with supernatural powers) told you that you could have had your two same children one at a time instead of as twins, do you think you would go for it?"
I think this thought comes up for a lot of twin moms, especially in the overwhelming first few years. Though probably more for folks who had twins as their first, and likely only, pregnancy. Having had the singleton experience, I am now pretty thrilled to have gotten the added challenge of twins. I feel like I have gotten the best of both worlds! And also that I somehow landed the fertility jackpot after a few years of not knowing if I would ever get pregnant at all. I had wanted to have lots of kids young-ish, and it was incredibly hard when things did not go according to "the plan". But then! Now I have want I wanted all along, in basically the same timeline. And since I am not a fan of pregnancy (AT ALL) I like the two-for-one aspect of that, as well.
I do like and appreciate that I have been able to have two births, and two infancy times, though, which those who only have twins do not get to experience. I know there is a lot of envy that first time moms of twins have about not getting to experience a "normal" pregnancy or life with a baby, and the (relative) ease of a singleton. In my case, I was able to enjoy E & D's infancy more than I did Emma's, despite the chaos and horrible sleep deprivation, I think because I was more experienced and less worried about stuff, and also more resigned/used to what motherhood is like. I imagine the change from 1-3 kids was probably much less shocking than what 0-2 would have been. We really knew what we were getting into.
Not that I am all sunshine and roses over here! Ha ha! I spent most of my pregnancy being totally overwhelmed and unhappy with the idea of twins. I felt like Emma absolutely didn't get the attention she desperately craved during my pregnancy, and still gets the short end of the stick a lot. I very often wonder what kind of kid she would be, and what kind of bond I would have with her, if I had not gotten pregnant at all, or at least not with twins. So I guess this is my mama-guilt/worry, somewhat related to the twin thing.
But in terms of Elsie and Delia, I don't really worry or feel sad about them as much, in terms of one on one/bonding time. At least not right now! I feel like we get those moments each day, snuck in here and there, enough that we are all happy and close. They are really happy-go-lucky kids, which is different from how Emma tends to be. In their first six months or so I did feel really bad at times, that I just couldn't meet all their needs, to hold them when they wanted, help them with sleep in the ways I preferred. They had to be left to cry for what felt like a lot some days, and it was really a challenge to know I couldn't parent them the way I did my singleton.
But the pro's of having a same age sibling, now that they are a bit older, are overwhelmingly obvious to me now! I feel like Elsie and Delia are SO much happier and easier to parent than Emma was at this age (I suppose this could partly be due to me not being horribly miserably tired and sick due to pregnancy, though!). They are SO much better with sharing, playing with each other and other kids, letting me do stuff instead of constantly needing to entertain. Not that I did that with Emma either, but I am even more chill and relaxed (lazy?) now than I was then. I am sure some of this is more characteristic of having siblings at all, not necessarily just twins/multiples, but I do think having a sibling the same age really intensifies it.
All in all, I definitely feel twins are pretty damn cool, and wouldn't trade it for anything (even a couple years of awesome sleep, ha ha!)
