The amount of prgnant women giving birth to multiple babies has risen dramatically over the past decade. Wendy champagne looks at this life-changing phenomenon.
On a typical night Alison Davies wakes at least four times and spends four or five hours feeding her newborn children, Antoine and Annabelle. "I can't complain," she says, "they're two separate individuals needing the same amount of love and attention."
Alison is one of an unprecedented number of women who has given birth to multiples over the last decade. National Vital Statistics from the US corroborating trends in Australia, report that between 1980 and 1997 the number of twin births rose by 52 percent, while triplets and other higher order multiples rose 404 percent.
The growth in birth rates was most marked in women over 30 - there were more twins born to women 45-49 years of age in 1997 than in the entire decade of the 1980's. The cause: fertility drugs and in vitro fertilisation procedures.
From biblical twins Cain and Abel to the Krays, multiples make headlines. And until modern medicine explained the phenomenon, there was a stigma attached to being a multiple - in Indonesia twins were considered holy, while certain American Indian tribes appeared to adopt the good twin/bad twin theory, killing the evil one.
There are two major types of twins, fraternal and identical. Current fertility treatments often cause fraternal multiples who develop from two or more separate eggs. Each egg develops singly, is fertilised singly, and forms its own individual placenta. They may be the same or different sexes and they are not genetically identical to one another.
On the other hand, identical twins or multiples develop from a single egg fertilised by a single sperm. The fertilised egg, called a zygote splits at a relatively early stage of its growth into separate cell masses which go on to become embryos. These embryos are genetically identical and always the same sex.
Alison's 3-month old twins are fraternal. Her children are the product of successive fertility treatments, as well as Alison's extraordinary patience, hope, and insistence on becoming a mother this lifetime.
But her children are in a high-risk health category - even before birth the perinatal mortality rate is 3 to 8 times that of a single pregnancy. Iinfants born in multiple deliveries are usually premature, i.e. born earlier and smaller than their single counterparts and they are less likely to survive their first year of life. They are also more likely to suffer life-long disability when they do survive.
Priorities and organization are very important to the parents of multiples. "I accept any offer of help," says Alison, a former corporate consultant turned full-time mother. "Nowadays I'm lucky if I manage a shower by the time Simon comes home from work, forget about making dinner."
Pediatricians caution parents about treating twins as a set rather than two individuals. Multiples have a special bond, and Alison was advised to respect that bond while also attending to her babies as separate beings with their own individual needs.
The most important issue for Alison in these first twelve months, besides loving and caring for her young babies, is rest and nutrition. "I grab whatever down time I can," she says. "I have had to let go my obsession with a spotless house, ironed clothes, even washed hair, and focus on our immediate requirements."
By the time they are three or four, Annabelle and Antoine will be out of the danger zone in terms of their health, and Alison should have caught up on her sleep. And from then on, as long as the twins are not separated prematurely, life should be twice as much fun.
References: The Australian Multiple Birth Association National Center for Health Statistics September 12th 2000 News Release National Vital Statistics Reports, Volume 47 Number 24
Reprinted with permission from Editforce
