The twin business (2)

When you await a baby you discover supermarket aisles that you have never noticed before. I’m sure you’ve also been through this. I haven’t got a pet, so I never stop by the pet food aisle. I remember the first time that I entered the baby aisle. I was five or six months pregnant and I started to look at the prices and available range of nappies, milk and baby food, because I felt that I should already know all these things by then. This is what a Master’s degree is badly needed on. I remember leaving the supermarket with a throbbing headache and wondering not only what on earth all those products were used for, but also why nobody had ever told me what they were used for and how to use them.

When you await a baby (and when it’s twins this grows exponentially)... it’s all Master’s Degrees. A Master’s on baby trolleys, a Master’s on cots, a Master’s on bottle warmers, a Master’s on breast pumps (a terrible device that should be banned and which we called Chucky the evil breast pump at home, and which we hardly used)... But here we could break away from the rules of the twin invasion which, as I told you, is based on the twin business. It’s a matter of putting a mother of twins in your life. Someone who already knows what you’re going through.

“My” mom of twins (whose position we might call twin-counsellor) has been the person who’s given us the most honest and practical advice during the pregnancy and ever since the girls were born. Meeting up with her was like looking into a crystal ball to see our future and know what we would experience in a few months’ time, in a year. Thanks to her advice and the many things that she passed on to us (material, clothes, small appliances... and especially helping us keep our feet on the ground and realise how we were targeted to sell us absolutely anything), the twins who want to rule the world did not obtain the expected income from us. Luckily, the idea of buying a nappy compactor, as well as many other  gadgets out in the market and on display in shop windows, never crossed our minds for a second. 
That’s why from that moment on, I have thought that it’d be a great idea if when you head for the GP practice, when you meet up with your midwife, there was a twin parent network to be able to share fears, everyday practices and everything which comes to your mind when you’re a first-time parent... and you’re expecting two babies at once. It would be a good idea if midwives took care of this. Let me refer here to the NeverEnding Story to say that mine- I mean, my assigned midwife- was a completely different story. We’ll have to come back to this on another occasion.