10 Things That Still Surprise Me About Having Twins

The Cub Twins turn 1 today! That’s right, the longest, shortest 365 days of my life have passed.

I can confidently say that this is the most sleep-deprived I’ve ever been, but that it has consistently gotten easier as we transitioned from feeding and pumping every two to three hours to baby-led weaning and saying bye to my pump for good.

It hasn’t been easy and I haven’t loved every minute of it. There are days when I crawl into bed (usually about five minutes before one or both of them wake up) and realize I didn’t savour a single moment with my boys; I just kept them clean(ish) and fed and tried to juggle a whole bunch of other things. And that’s okay.

So without further ado, here are 10 things that still surprise me, 365 days after I gave birth to my twins:

1- How many times in one day I can be told that I have my hands full.

2- How often I talk to complete strangers about my reproductive organs.

3- How poorly adapted our world is to wheelchair users. If I can’t access a bathroom, an entrance or a store with my twins in their double stroller, neither can a wheelchair user.

4- How two babies who grew together in the same uterus and now experience the exact same environment still hit their milestones at different moments. (So relax, moms comparing their same-age babies in Facebook mom groups!)

5- How much of an affinity I immediately feel when I meet another parent of multiples (and how helping a family with quads really puts the difficulty of twins into perspective).

6- How grateful I am that Twin A quickly developed a mole on one leg so I could tell them apart in moments of panic.

7- How often I wonder if some twins were accidentally mixed up by their parents at some point and they just never realized.

8- How being only 4 minutes apart, I still consider one older than the other.

9- How equality has become oddly important: if one twin is getting changed out of pyjamas, I need both of them out of pyjamas. One needs a bath? They’re both getting a bath!

10- How every so often, even a year later, I can look at those two little faces and think: “Holy crap. I have twins.”

I can’t wait to find out what surprises year 2 will bring!