It can be tough to be parents of a new baby – but what must it be like for the parents of eight, asks EMMA CULLINAN.
INTERRUPTED NIGHTS, endless feeding, dressing and carrying are the lot of all new parents and it is exhausting – so what can it be like multiplying that with twins, triplets or even, unimaginably, the eight babies born in California last week?
“It is just the sheer doubling up and tripling up of everything,” says Carol Merriman, chair of the Irish Multiple Births Association (IMBA) and the mother of five-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. “It is double nappies, double the feeds and double the lack of sleep. My advice to anybody is to get as much help as you can, never say no, even if it is just someone offering to do a wash or the ironing. You can’t do it all on your own.”
When Wexford couple Kevin and Veronica Cassidy had quins in 2001, family, friends, neighbours and the health board pitched in (such State help is not offered as a matter of course to those with multiples). “I never imagined that it was going to be as hard as it was, the workload was intense,” says Veronica. “It would have been impossible without help, I just couldn’t have done it.
“Friends and neighbours were so good at rallying round. They came in and helped with the feeding and nappy changing. Two neighbours came every day at 8am to help feed them, another two at lunchtime and another two in the evening; they were amazing.” The health board provided two night staff and one day helper.
In most such situations there will be two parents on hand, but when Margaret McCreanor was in the late stages of her pregnancy with twins, the relationship with the twins’ father ended.
“I did wonder how I was going to manage alone,” says the mother of two year olds, Fionn and Caelum. “My mum and dad helped and, if I didn’t have them, I think I would have gone mad. If my dad heard me getting up in the night he would get up and help with the feeding and my mum would help me feed them during the day.”
(The parents of the octuplets born in Texas in 1998 – one of whom died in the first week – put much of their survival down to a hands-on grandmother. See photograph.)
A routine was important to McCreanor and she made sure that her boys slept and ate together. “One of them weighed 6lbs 3oz at birth and the other was 4lbs 11oz and he had to go into special care after he was born to regulate his blood sugar. I asked them to tell me when they were feeding him so that I could feed his brother at exactly the same time. When we got home I fed them together, with one propped up and the other in my arms. I would also rock them to sleep at the same time.”
Many people do establish routines, says Merriman, although she chose a more casual approach. “How you deal with things is personal,” she says, pointing out that some IMBA members are so organised with their twins and triplets that they are in the association working hard when their babies are just a few months old.
“But there will always be a certain amount of chaos. You are constantly busy and there is the lack of sleep from getting up three or four times a night feeding and changing. Even getting out of the house can be difficult – for instance, taking one child out to the car seat, strapping them in, and going back into the house and getting the other one and doing it again.”
It helps if you keep notes, says Merriman. “You’re so tired and your head is so muzzy that you forget so much and have to write it down; things like what time baby one was changed and who you have already fed.”
Most calls to the IMBA concern the feeding, lack of sleep and establishing a routine. Others are worried about all of the equipment they will have to buy but McCreanor advises that you shouldn’t buy things until you need them. Her two shared a cot and, as she says, you don’t need to double up on toys as they will invariably play with them one by one. “One would lie under the baby gym while the other would be doing something else,” she says.
With the intense workload during the early months, friends do take second place for a while, says Merriman, “and there is little social life”.
“It was a long time after they were born that I first went out without them,” says Cassidy.
ADDING TO THE stress is the fact that multiple babies are also more prone to illness for various reasons, some of which can be related to low birth weight, and those born prematurely can have underdeveloped lungs. This is on top of greater risks during pregnancy from conditions like high blood pressure.
“The doctors said that the chances of carrying all five to full term were slim,” says Cassidy, who was in hospital from the time she was 23 weeks pregnant until her children were born, at 25 weeks. “The target was to get to 24 weeks and take it day by day after that.
“The worry was intense after they were born because they were prone to infection. They got bronchitis and one of them got pneumonia so we were in Wexford General soon after the birth. Then there was the 24 hours a day working.
“It was over a year before I could say, ‘yeah, I can relax a bit now’.” Things do get easier, says Merriman, whose association has 180 family members with mainly twins and triplets, with one set of quads.
“Six weeks is a magic number,” says Merriman, whose twins are now five, and who has two older children. “It all starts to fall into place after a while and you get your own system going.”
“Once you get them sleeping through the night and are over the first hurdles it’s grand,” says McCreanor. “My two are so good now and I can bring them anywhere. They do sometimes fight for your attention but they do that so much that after a while they learn to take a back seat now and again.”
Parents of multiples should look at the positives, says Merriman. “I love having a big family and as the twins get older they are great company for each other and really amuse each other.”
“It is just lovely to have these two little faces smiling up at you,” says McCreanor. “You get double the love: they are so special.”
“It is a lovely sound when they are all playing and making happy noises,” says Cassidy,” although the noise level gets a bit much if they are shouting and arguing. Christmases are great, the birthday is great, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are great and bedtime is always nice because there are so many snuggles and cuddles.”