Are they identical?

Camilla Lloyd - 25 Mar 19

“You’re brave.” “You iz BRAVE ladeeee!” Inside I am screaming: ‘Really, am I?!’ I have two babies inside me and two daughters who have already vacated. Two huge babies stretching me every which way that you can imagine and some that you won’t want to. I have spent the last few months trying not to think about how I wished there was only one. I did though. It left me bereft as which one would I get rid of? There’s no answer, is there? I am not someone who struggles to bond with her unborn. They have me at hello (or the scan) and they keep me forever.

I still find myself dwelling on how much easier it would be with one … The birth, the ‘bus’, the holidays, the feeding, the sleeping, the amount of arms that I have. How will I spread myself between four who I will love in completeness? Who will give? Can your heart stretch as much as your tummy? How will we find space when we are so outnumbered?

I don’t feel brave; I don’t feel like there was a lot of choice in the matter. Our children are here and born and loved they will be, but I am still full of fear. I don’t feel even a teensy bit brave so please unknown strangers, friends and other nitwits don’t say to a woman expecting twins: “You’re brave.” It is no help and it just makes me want to shout: “I iz not a brave ladeee! I’m not, but I don’t know who else to be.”

Other unhelpful comments include: “Do twins run in your family?” (I am guilty too; I feel terrible still as it’s intrusive. Don’t start me on: “Are they natural?”).  And “You get bigger every day.” No sh*t. Also annoying just because it’s a bit dim, if you know we have a son and daughter coming, don’t ask if they are identical. God forbid they be the same.

The discomfort is beyond belief. So for that I am brave, every twin mother is brave just for getting out of bed. Everything hurts and I no longer recognise my body, I don’t even mean visually, although there’s that too, I am uncertain of my limitations, there are many and they are huge. Getting out of the car, sitting still, bending down, breathing, the heartburn, the need to wee constantly, the searing, intermittent pain and constant ache in my pelvis and thighs. Every week, I imagine it can’t get worse, but it does as I get bigger and bigger. Even as I am editing last year’s thoughts, I easily remember the pain. My poor partner. I tried with every ounce of me to be valiant, but I was still like a heavy-hearted elephant.

They are born too early at 34 +1. Although I felt overwhelmed by anxiety and unable really to enter the room where an emergency C-Section was happening to me, I knew I loved our tiny scraps.

Pushing the double buggy in the smog of those first weeks, shoving myself through doors meant for a single, how many people uttered the same words to me … A thousand. It felt like a thousand. “You’ve got your hands full, your work’s cut out, double trouble, are they identical? You’re brave.” ARGHHH.

And one of the nicest things someone said to me? My hair was half in a ponytail, and half out, my Chelsea bun almost all crammed into my mouth, my eyes slits of their former selves, my clothes covered in breast milk. An older woman winked and said: “aren’t you a clever girl?” I don’t know if it was that she could see there was a girl under the mess, a girl, not a woman and certainly not a brave lady or that she didn’t use the words work, identical or hands. Or that she’d have said it even if all three of us had been smeared in snot sobbing. Or if it was simply kindness when I needed it most. But I felt embraced by an unknown stranger and I finally thought: ‘I am, aren’t I? I am a clever girl.’

Camilla Lloyd

Camilla Lloyd An editor and writer in my former life. Now mostly a mum (in Surrey) to four growing humans: Maya, Willow, Rafferty and India. When the twins entered our lives like little bolts of lightening, we found ourselves with four children under the age of four and a half. It's a ride!

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