In an age when babies come later, and fertility problems are greater, it's easy to see why having twins might appeal. It means, after all, you only have to go through pregnancy once to get two babies. If you're older, and fear you might not be able to squeeze in another pregnancy before your fertility clock stops, you produce in an instant the two-child family you might otherwise never have had. If you're up to your neck in a demanding career, meanwhile, you'll benefit from only one spell out of the office on maternity leave. And if you're paying for IVF it's even better: you buy one, and you get one free.
No surprises, then, that according to fertility clinics more couples are asking for help in the specific hope of conceiving twins and - as they see it - getting their family life off to a flying start. The Bupa hospital in Ilford, east London, said this week that 20 couples have requested twins in the past year - that's one in 10 of all patients seeking IVF. But are they right to assume it's an easy and efficient way to head off on the parenting journey? Um, no, say parents who are currently raising twins: the truth is that it's harder than any of them could possibly have imagined. And while they wouldn't be without their twins now, most say they'd counsel anyone against actively raising the stakes in favour of having two babies at once. "If you've got to do it, you manage somehow," says one mother. "But it's been the hardest slog of my life."
From the outset, having twins is trickier. You might be getting two pregnancies for the price of one, but that one isn't usually an easy ride: for most women, the early weeks are ruined by draining tiredness and constant nausea, not to mention hours spent hanging around at hospital clinics for all the extra antenatal appointments you are told you need. Then there are the worries: more risk of congenital abnormalities and a higher chance of pre-eclampsia. And as the pregnancy wears on, so too does the risk - more than if you were carrying only one baby - of sampling the horrors of varicose veins and piles, not to mention anaemia. Finally, you face the increased chance that you'll give birth prematurely, with a 50% risk of one or both babies ending up in special care.
Jenny McCormac, 44, had her twins Joanne and William seven years ago. "A boy and a girl - it looked like the perfect family," she says. But it certainly didn't turn out that way: when doctors decided her twins had to arrive early at 30 weeks, it took five hours to even find a hospital with two special-care beds. "We live in Northamptonshire and the doctor was phoning hospitals as far away as Manchester," she says. "In the end they were born in Milton Keynes, and spent their first four weeks there. Then they moved back to our local hospital for another two months, and that was hard too.
"Coming home with two tiny babies was very traumatic - I had no friends, no support network, and here I was looking after two babies who had had a whole paediatric team the week before. It was very stressful, very demanding and very lonely. I went back to work when they were about four months old, which was far too early - I'd be driving two hours to a meeting and then I'd spend the whole time terrified that I wouldn't be able to get back quickly enough if anything happened."
McCormac has been raising her children on her own since they were a few months old. "The pressure of having two of them added to the reasons why we split up," she says. "And raising them on my own is hard - I've been on anti-depressants for years."
McCormac's babies were born through IVF: so too were Charlie and George, the nearly-three-year-old twins of Louise Edwards, 38, who lives near Manchester. Both McCormac and Edwards agree that, though they were happy to have two eggs implanted to raise the chance of a pregnancy, they would never have done it with the intention of having twins. "I knew we could have twins, but I hoped we wouldn't," says Edwards. "The early weeks and months were the hardest: I remember sleeping in rotation with my husband - I'd go to bed for a few hours while he stayed up to feed and look after the babies, and then I'd get up to relieve him. You were just feeding one and then by the time he went back to sleep the other would be waking up. I felt I spent the whole time making up bottles - there was no time to actually enjoy them."
Going back to work after twins is rarely easy. "The nursery cost me £970 a month - I was working myself to death and only taking home £200 a month," says Edwards. Indeed, childcare is often difficult: Reeta Chakrabarti, whose twins are now nearly five and who also has an older child of 11, found a childminder was no longer a viable option when she returned to her job - she had to employ a nanny instead.
She remembers the early months and years as being immensely hard work, and often unsatisfying. "With a single baby you have these perfect moments when you just love them and they just love you," she says. "But that never happens with twins - whenever you're concentrating on one, there's always the other one to worry about. You can provide for one, but you're not providing for the other, and that thought is always there."
Beyond babyhood, the challenges continue. Justine Roberts, whose twin daughters are six, says she feels she is constantly dealing with "sibling rivalry gone mad ... it's so hard as a parent to give them enough time and attention. You're constantly aware of the need not to pigeonhole them, and you're not sure how to deal with it if one is better than the other at something. It's like all the problems you get anyway with siblings, but somehow they're so much more stark and intense when they're twins. There are so many comparisons, all the time ... I keep thinking, what's it going to be like on the day they get their GCSE results? The problems just go on and on ..."
Life with twins does have its compensations. You will, after all, be the toast of the neighbourhood (although one mother says she got so sick of people wanting to peer into the double-buggy that she had to suppress the urge to mow them down). There will be moments when you'll see your babies playing together and realise how lucky they'll always be to have one another, and times when your heart will swell with pride that they're both so wonderful, and they're both yours. But the bottom line, say the experts (ie other parents who have been there) is this: don't choose twins deliberately. You may not exactly live to regret it, but you probably have no inkling of what you're letting yourself in for.
