Nashwa Abdel-Tawab discovers the difficulty involved in raising twins is belittled by the sheer beauty of the experience For the past week, my sisters and I took responsibility for our intelligent and active two-year-old niece Karima. And what a week it was for us working women. We got a taster of how hectic life can be for mothers, and also of how beautiful it is. We all know raising a child is tough, but believe me, experience talks louder. For a week we were on an amazing roller-coaster, filled with challenge and wonder. Of course my friends who have children of their own ridiculed my excitement, describing our experience of constant work as normal. All this led me to wonder just how working women manage to transform their lifestyles when they deliver not just one baby but twins. Giving birth to and rearing multiples is exciting, exhausting, expensive and exhilarating. Indeed one would be stretched to describe the experience adequately, though the popular expression "double trouble" comes close. According to a study presented at the 2008 annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Barcelona, Spain, mothers and fathers of twins show more symptoms of mental health problems following their babies' delivery and one year after birth, than do parents of single babies. Women frequently suffer postpartum depression, especially due to elevated hormone levels following a multiple birth. The study also reported that fathers of twins have more anxiety, depression, sleep problems and social dysfunctions than do other fathers, since they have to bear the increased responsibility to financially support their growing family, and that can add stress to their lives. Twin births are also given fame through the experience of media figures. Internationally, Angelina Jolie, 33, has six children to care for since the arrival of her twins, a girl and a boy, three months ago. In Egypt, there are ex-national football players Hossam and Ibrahim Hassan. Their mother brought them up successfully to be healthy, wealthy and indeed famous. Locally on television, we saw Ghazaleh Ibrahim, an Egyptian woman from Alexandria with three kids, deliver seven children in a multiple birth two months ago. Of course, hers is a very rare case, but generally speaking the birth of twins has become a widespread phenomenon in Egypt and the world during recent years. This is because of climate change, increased food contamination and the use of hormones in fertilised crops and poultry. Other factors can also influence the likelihood of having twins and these include family history, older age and the previous experience of bearing children. In addition there are those who want to have twins, and so choose to take fertiliser drugs and treatment. The question that remains is how on earth does one cope with two, three, four or seven children? Then again I suppose we all cope with our fate, and find the love, energy and strength to handle it. Not that coping is necessarily easy -- quite the contrary. "When parents find out that they're expecting twins, their initial reaction is often one of shock," psychologist Ali Suleiman told Al-Ahram Weekly. "This reaction stems from the expected difficulties in pregnancy, the painful delivery involved, the challenges encountered in pregnancy or childhood, the hardships in raising more than one child at once, and the added financial burden that having multiple births supposes." On the brighter side, there is a special bond between multiples. Families with twins share extraordinary stories, humorous situations, love, and shared joy. Thirty-two-year-old Shaimaa, mother of twins Mariam and Hagar, describes the reaction she has so often heard from friends: "'You're lucky, you've got your family all in one shot,' is how people congratulate me albeit with some pity in their eyes, to help me look at my dilemma from another positive perspective. To be perfectly honest I didn't enjoy these comments because they didn't help me or my kids." Though to begin with life was tough, Shaimaa's experience has grown easier as her twin daughters have begun to grow. "My girls, almost four now, are asleep after a day of make- believe castles in the living room and dragging each other around by their T-shirts pretending to be puppies. All this is played out with equal measures of toddler assertions and giggles in stereo," she told the Weekly over the phone. "There were almost no fights, and very few tears -- the kind of day I didn't believe possible just a short time ago. After they get to sleep I get some time to clean the house, prepare the food for the next day and sit with my husband, who is very demanding. I sleep around four hours a night, and send my kids to a nursery when I go to work as an attendant at the airport." When she was younger, Shaimaa was quite lazy, she says. She used to wake up late and do things slowly. And she cherished outings with friends. Now half an hour's sleep is a blessing for her. Going out has become occasional. Radwa, who has also had twins as well as two older boys, describes her own experience. "When people hear you've had twins, comments vary from 'double trouble' and 'rather you than me,' to 'lucky you.' People marvel at how you manage to stay sane but when it's your only reality, it somehow becomes the norm," Radwa told the Weekly. "There are, of course, difficult times to begin with -- breast feeding two babies at once involves contortions that will serve me well as a circus performer, being up most of the night to cope with the never-ending cycle of breastfeeding and changing and the logistical challenges of two car seats, double buggies and a house littered with baby equipment. Their father is travelling and I live far from my mother, so naturally I don't have time to sleep or eat regularly but I can afford an educated nanny who comes to help out for four hours in the afternoon for LE30 per day. During that time I help my other boys study for school." Not long ago Radwa had other plans for her boys, of an international education that would no doubt be costly. But after the birth of her twins, her calculations changed completely. "The financial demands are merciless and children need so much. Of course the birth of my wonderful twins has led me to tighten my budget, forcing me to change my options," she said. Luckily, she's not too badly off, so she'll still be able to provide her children with language-school education up until high school or university, after which she plans to shift them to an international education. Radwa works as a dentist and studied for her masters and doctorate degrees while raising her children. She subsequently became a tenured professor at the Cairo University Faculty of Dentistry. Her post forces her to find time to go to work on regular basis, and thus leave the twins with the nanny till she comes back. "But my working life will be better in a year's time or so, when the twins are old enough to go to the nursery." Twins some years ago were even more of a burden on their mothers. "Raising the twins all seems like a distant memory now and those challenges have been replaced by others," said 72-year-old Nadia, a school headmistress who has 37-year-old twin girls. "But three memories do stand out as particularly tiring: breastfeeding, the great amount of diaper washing and competition. I was turned into a sort of acrobat while breastfeeding them as they usually cried for food at the same time. So I used to close the door, put the babies on the bed and bend over them to feed them together. I felt like I was turning into a cow," laughed Nadia. "More difficult still was the fact that their father died seven months after they were born. I went to live with my mother-in-law, and worked to support the family. I worked as a teacher to have half my kids' tuition fees covered. I used to go to a school near our house early with the boys, come back two hours later to feed the girls, then go back to school, and bring them back home with me at the end of the school day. Then I'd feed the girls again, study with the boys, clean up the constantly messy house we lived in and then wash the diapers, which was in and of itself a massive effort. Thank God women have disposable diapers now, a luxury we didn't have," she said. According to Nadia, the girls were harder to bring up than the boys. "They had very different personalities, and enjoyed different activities. While one was into drawing, the other liked dancing. They were in constant competition for adult attention -- it seems their vying for space started in the womb and continued," she told the Weekly. Unlike single children, it was practically impossible to find time to offer each twin the opportunity for one-on-one attention. Still, there was much beauty involved in their upbringing too. "Having twins is such a special gift. When I used to see the two of them playing amiably or walking hand in hand down the street when they were young, or when they chose to live near each other after getting married, it dawned on me that I was truly blessed, as they were too of course. When you ask one of them who their best friend is, they without hesitation answer, 'my sister.' That is not to say of course that they didn't fight like wild animals as children. There is an intimate relationship I will never be a part of, nor even totally understand, even after so long," Nadia said emotively. According to a recent study published by the Ministry of Health, based on statistics compiled by family medical centres across the country, twins are born in Egypt every 10 minutes. Further, five per cent of Egypt's population are twins, with an increase of 60,000 twins per year. Over the age of 35, your chances of having a multiple birth increase and as more and more women, for personal and economic reasons, marry late in their 30s, we'll see more and more twin buggies out there. There is no secret method to figure out who out there is a mother of multiples -- just look out for the lady with the massive bags, unmatched shoes and the prettiest smile.
