AIBU to think that parents of twins do not have it harder

[PizzaSlut]

I have 3 DC including 2 less than 2 years apart.

Twice in the last 2 days I have had parents of twins moaning about how hard it is to parent them and the financial cost. ones set are same as dd1 and the other are same as ds1.

Surely I have the same costs albeit not in the same financial year and surely dd2 and ds1 have similar needs at 7 and 5 as twins 2.

Two babies with chicken pox!!! :(

YABU each person's circumstances and children are unique. i have relatives with twins, they both had quite easy laid back babies, my ds on the other hand fed every hour for a good 3months,

one of my family members only had 11months between her eldest and the twins the only thing she found hard was getting out and about with 3 babies, impossible on her own tbh

I have twins and like most other parents have a moan sometimes because I have hard days - it's not a competition they probably didnt mean that they were worse of than you - just letting off a bit of steam.

YABU. I have 5DC, 2 are DTs. DTs are much harder as toddlers and restrict what you can do as you only have one pair of hands. But it is the financial cost that is the hardest. Eg we went from 2 to 4DC in one go and needed bigger house and car. Working becomes out of the question for many due to childcare. School trips and uniforms are very hard as it is double the cost of everything. 2 DC close in age is not the same.

Is it a contest?

I had 2 DC with cihcken pon, DD1 gave it to DD2 at 10 weeks old. That was not pleasant.

I also had to do the school run with 2 children the twins are the only children in their families.

Loopy What's TC?

There is an ancient curse... "May you be the mother of twins". Says it all really . I have twins and a sib just 22 months younger, three under 2 was, uhm, interesting

I've got ddtwins. I don't know what it's like to have one at a time. I remember wandering round a supermarket in a sleep deprived haze wondering vaguely why all the other people with pushchairs had only brought one baby and left the other somewhere else.

I have twins and I've also been told it's expensive and sooooo muuuuuuch haaaaaard work. The early months were hard, simply because there was no time for anything other than feeding, changing and bathing, the babies not me. I must have eaten at some point but I don't remember when.

To start with each one took an hour to feed, every other hour, so it was literally feed DD1, wind her, change nappy, lay her down and pick up DD2, feed, wind, change, pick up DD1 and repeat. Then DD2's reflux kicked in, which made feeding a much longer process for her. After about 6 weeks for DD1 and 12weeks for DD2 they were going longer between feeds and it became easier- until they started to crawl. In opposite directions

Oh, and the expensive bit is because you have to spend the money in one go, instead of baby related costs being a few years apart.

Even now people tell me how much harder it is to have twins, usually these are people who have not had twins themselves. I know another two mothers of twins and they didn't find it a particular problem either.

I don't worry about how much hard work other people tell me it is, I just enjoy my twins

fussbucket

YABU
Apart from needing two of every bit of baby kit and clothing.
Twins demand attention at the same time in a way no sibling pair ever can. Eating BFing and changing and hugging at exactly the same moment as babies. And the most skilful attention demanding as toddlers. Wanting Mum's attention the split second their twin has it is an art form.

I don't have twins, but a DF does and watching these antics assures me I didn't want them.

They are lovely teens with their own interests now.

I never meant it to be competition but parents of DTs do not realise how hard it is ofr those with smaller age gaps and unless you have the same gender you have to fork out for 2 lots of clothes.

Smaller age gaps do not sleep at the same time you have less rest time as you are grabbing one toddler from some thing while the baby sleeps, twins have similar routines, I still have school trips to pay for, I still have to buy 2 sets of clothes.

I cannot budget any different for DD2 and DS than someone with twins.

I have twins, and OP, it's TOTALLY different to two close together. Remember those early days when you had a newborn and you were sleep deprived? When your baby went to sleep, you could too. Your older child would NOT have been waking every couple of hours for a feed, could hold his own bottle cup, could sit quietly and eat a biscuit. Twin newborns can't.
Remember when you went to a playgroup and your older one could toddle off and play whilst you held the baby? With twins, you can't. They both need you. All the time.
Remember when your newborn cried and you picked her up and your older one could sit next to you, or watch cbeebies, or go to nursery, or play with grandma? Nope, with twins you can't. Thats the point - they are both as utterly dependent as each other. So they both cry at the same time, then what? You pick one up and let the other cry. Can you imagine how that feels, to have to do that again and again, and be spread that thin between your babies who both need you equally?
And remember when you could moan to friends about how hard the early months are, and they'd sympathise and you'd feel solidarity at some level? With twins, your singleton friends can't do that because (if they've got any sense) they know that it's more than twice as hard. And in a funny way that's actually quite isolating. When you have twins suddenly your friends view you as superwoman and feel they can't ever moan.

And don't get me started on the cost of 2 lots of everything, including nursery fees!

So OP, YABVVU.

As the very good friend of a woman with twins (along with 2 older siblings) I can safely vouch for her that twins are very very hard work - as she bf them both - much more so than close siblings. She actually confided in me that at her twins club parents of twins occasionally admitted resented parents with just a singleton. She said she occasionally resented parents with just twins.

Yabu, sorry.

I can sort of judge this. When I was 15, my mum had twins. I am also the mother of 2 children who are 16 months apart.

I know that over the years, my mum has found it hard, financially to have twins. Not just the expense of nappies and inability to hand anything down, but also the cost of things like school trips. Being in the same year group, there was no staggering the costs, like there would be if children were in different year groups. I also think it was quite hard, having two teenagers doing GCSEs at the same time. The up side was that she could get potty training over with all in one go, also weaning, getting them to sleep through the night - so she didn't feel like she was doing all those things on a loop for years.

For myself, I found the age gap helpful, in that my babies didn't need exactly the same thing at exactly the same time. My 16 month old could eat by himself (albeit very messily), with me supervising, but able to feed the baby. Even now, I can still hand things down. Toys last longer, because as the older one outgrew something, the younger one would play with it. I liked that I didn't need a double pram for too long.

I do agree that level of difficulty also depends on the personalities of the children and how much help you get in looking after them.

There are different challenges for all families regardless of age gaps and the ammount of children no one can fully understand those challenges unless they have been there.

But have you had 2 high needs children close together, needing to pull one away from danger when you are sleep deprived because baby hasn't slept.

2 close together don't have the same routines or needs that twins have, they are not at the same developmental stage. Which leads to less rest during the day and the same bad nights at night.

Pizzaslut Twins DO NOT always have similar rotines. Where did u get that from?? My two are sleepy/awake/hungry etc often at totally different times. They are totally different girls, not the same being in two different bodies!!

My friend chose to have a baby. They could afford one. Then the scan showed that she was expecting twins. There was no way on their pay they could afford 2 sets of child are fees. Then within weeks of the twins being born, her dh gets made redundant. She had to return full time earlier than planned, then she was made redundant.

I find one expensive school trip hard enough to afford without having to pay 2 lots. There's very few hand me downs.

There's a lot of pro's and cons for either twins or children close in age. But twins aren't always the choice.

Clothes are alot cheaper than cots and highchairs and car seats though. Twins don't alays sleep at the same time. Many twins have health/speech/premature issues too on top to deal with. School trips a year apart are not the same as double in one year. Eg school residential 300 pound spread over the year for two years or 600 in one year. Secondary uniform x two is 300 pounds etc. It is the toddler stage too that is very hard. At my twinsclub most of us agreed that we found 2/3 was the hardest age physically. Both going in different directions etc. I think if you don't have twins yourself you can't really appreciate how hard it can be.

That's a sweeping generalisation about what parents of twins do and don't realise. Tell you what though OP, perhaps YOU don't realise that twin mums are 74% more likely to have PND? That twins have a FIFTY percent likelihood of spending time in SCBU/NICU? That twins have a far higher rate of death in the first year of life than a singleton? That their births are far more likely to be highly medicalised? With a singleton you are much less likely to encounter these problems, and this alone makes a huge difference.
Multiple birth families are now treated by some children's services as having special needs which can't be met in the mainstream as a result of this birth inequality. I suggest you read some info from TAMBA and stop moaning. You don't know what you're on about.

Jellybeans sums it up nicely. Unless you have twins, how will you ever know what it's like??

i have twins had i had them first i would never of had anymore! lol yes it is bloody hard,and money wise when trips come up i have to pay twice but you just get on with it,didnt help that when i had mine they got rushed into hospital at 2 weeks old and then i did at 6 weeks old and hubby suffered depression and then at 3 months old mil had 2 strokes :( and the boys didnt sleep through the night till over a year old.