It isn’t comparable to being a single parent, though. And it is very, very far from having a disabled child (or children).
This is my point though. All those things that make life tough for parents of singletons can also be true for parents of twins.
Both of my twins are disabled. Parenting two disabled toddlers simultaneously is very challenging, but not as challenging as my friend whose twins are both wheelchair users and profoundly disabled.
I met many mums in nicu who had one baby in there for a month or so and it was incredibly hard for them. Mine spent 17 days and 2 months in there respectively which was a huge challenge. I know a twin mum who’s single and her twins were very premature and she spent four months in nicu with them, one has needed multiple heart surgeries. She’s lucky she has family to help (we don’t, so I’d be screwed if DH couldn’t care for one twin when I’m with the other in hospital). Another twin mum is married but her twins were in for 7 months and one has extensive medical needs - like us one is frequently admitted to hospital, which causes all manner of challenges when you have two.
Yet another local twin mum has autistic twins and her husband died when they were babies.
All of these things would be very hard with one baby, but are so much harder when there are two at once. Aside from the financial issues already discussed, I’ve had to do two lots of DLA, blue badge and in particular EHCP applications which are a nightmare for one child, the stress of two at once has nearly driven me over the edge. Just the fact they’re twins has made things so much more complicated as the LA have forgotten to request reports for both of them on multiple occasions.
We have two lots of portage sessions, SALT sessions, two lots of consultants, double the tests etc etc.
On top of that I literally can’t take them out by myself because they have no sense of danger and no understanding of language. If there were only one I could take them to the park, to the beach, to soft play, swimming etc. Soft play, swimming or a similar activity is utterly impossible without another adult so there’s one each.
I wouldn’t be able to do a regular job even without their additional needs. When they had chicken pox there’s was a full month where one or the other was off nursery. From October through to about April there’s almost always one of us with a bug at any one time. It’s a blooming nightmare. The same would be true for any working parent, but the number of times we have one that’s well enough for nursery and one that’s not is insane. The only twin parents I know who’ve managed to go back by now have family who can take them when they’re sick.
I’m absolutely not saying we have it harder than anyone else - I literally don’t know how parents with triplets or more manage, or people with more than one set of multiples, or people who have twins when they already had a couple of children. Or people with children more disabled than mine. Or single parents without a lot of family support etc.
It just seems bizarre that some people are so eager to dismiss the obvious difficulties of having double the usual number of babies at the same time. Doesn’t mean it’s harder than anything else in existence (we aren’t in somewhere like Syria for a start), but denying the objective reality that having two babies is harder than having one is odd.