So there we were, poised on the edge of superstardom, Spielberg reaching for the phone to cast our girls as identical twins in his latest blockbuster, when it became obvious to us that, despite the weight difference that had remained between them, they really weren't very identical identical twins after all. We had heard many stories about people having to paint indelible marks on the soles of their twins feet to tell them apart and we expected Emily's alien appearance to soften and become a clone of her sister, but it just didn't happen. Well, she had softened and stopped looking like ET, but apart from that we could tell them apart quite easily. (OK, OK, so I still had trouble every now and again but, being a bloke I had a reasonable excuse).

Emily's face was definitely rounder, and her eyes were...... kind of smaller and..... oh....... what the....???

A chance glance upward from Emily one day during feeding her revealed something different about her and, in fact, something I can safely say I had never seen before in my life, and it scared the daylights out of me. The iris around her pupils appeared to be melting away, or so I first thought. A little while before this discovery we had been giving eye drops to Emily for a slight case of conjunctivitis and I had the horrible thought that maybe some reaction had occurred and her eyes were dissolving before my own....err.... eyes. A quick check of Rosanna showed that, although slight, she had some evidence of it too.

24 hours later after an A&E visit to Barnet, which resulted in two doctors looking at Emily and saying, "oh blimey, well we haven't a clue what that could be...", and a visit to a very nice optometrist at The Royal Free it was discovered that both girls had a birth eye defect called a Coloboma which varies in seriousness from blindness to a purely cosmetic problem. Both girls were, luckily, towards the cosmetic end, although Emily's coloboma is much more pronounced and makes her pupils look keyhole shaped. This throws people for a while when they look at her, until you explain why her eyes look a little odd.

One of the fringe benefits of having twins, especially identicals, is the possibility of earning a bit of cash from television and film work. Plus there's the kudos of dropping it into casual conversation with other parents that your child is the blink-and-you'll-miss-it abandoned baby in Holby City, born to a crack-addicted teenage mother. We like to think the leg up on the path to RADA for our girls was a little more high brow than that. I ask you, who can out do the impressive fact that our daughters played Alfie Moon's father in a flashback episode of Eastenders that saw Nana Moon reminiscing about World War 2? Now, there's class.... but if you blinked, you may have missed it.

Weighing in at just under 5 pounds, (sorry, I have no idea what that is in kilos, or metres, or whatever), Rosanna was able to go straight to Debbie but Emily, at just under 4 pounds, had to be kept in SCIBO, (Special Care Baby Unit. Not sure where the "i" comes from though. Guess it has a nicer ring to it than SCABU, which just sounds like a nasty skin disease). This left Debbie in the horrible position that, having been through a c-section, she was not able to easily visit Emily as often as she would have liked. Either she had to shuffle in there in great pain, or someone would wheel Emily to her for a quick visit. Either way it wasn't ideal and Debbie was naturally reluctant to take just the one baby home, so she stayed until Emily was big enough and strong enough to be discharged. In the end this was for 11 days.

11 days, that's a long time. For a father looking after a 3 year old on his own, it's not just a long time, it's a bloody eternity. But finally we got them home, in their car seats, although admittedly they did struggle with that last left hand bend a bit.



When your kids are born you are biased in your opinions of their looks, there is no doubt about that. But Emily, bless her, well she was no oil painting and we knew it. Being so small she did look a bit like a plucked chicken or, at best, a newly discovered alien lifeform.



But little did we know what other surprises Emily held in store for us.

And so the day arrived. We'd got through the numerous scans and genes tests and passed with flying colours. No sign of any reoccurrence of Spina Bifida and only a slight difference in size of the twin girls that we were expecting, (yes, we'd asked what the sex was. It's enough work to prepare for twins let alone fret about nursery colours!). So, four weeks before the due date, the powers that be decided that the 10th August was to be the day. Which was lucky in a way because Debbie was beginning to grind to a halt and had taken on the dimensions of a small dirigible.


Actually part of the reason for the decision to bring forward the delivery date was the fact that Emily had stopped growing, so TTTS may have been occurring. Either way it was time to meet the little critters.

Now, one of the best things about the delivery is that the father gets to dress up as a doctor and, short of actually getting a ride in an ambulance with all the lights and sirens going, it's the only bit of fun you'll have on the run up to the delivery. You know, there's definitely something about getting all George Clooneyed up that gets us guys the attention, and the delivery day was no exception. In fact here's a picture of me and my biggest fan....


After much medical shenanigans that really did involve a lot of woosiness on my part, and, I have no doubt, a bit of discomfort for Debbie as well, we were given our little angels. Well, me and my mother-in-law, Viv, were given the babies, Debbie had a small case of general anesthetic to get over and wasn't quite awake yet.

Sometimes knowledge can be a bad thing. Reading undoubtedly broadens the mind and I'm a big advocate, but some things you just don't want to know about. Like TTTS for instance. There are your babies, happily tucked up in their mummies cosy tummies, probably snuggling together and keeping each other warm, with just the smallest slightest infinitesimal chance that one is slowly draining all the life from the other until, having grown excessively, it too dies. Twin to Twin Transfusion syndrome is real and it's scary, especially to expectant parents, and it comes as a real shock when you are informed of the risks. Only affecting babies who share the same blood supply, it's a serious situation that has to be monitored carefully during pregnancy. Couple that with being an older mum, and having had a first child with Spina Bifida, and Debbie was regularly hooked up to all manner of bleeping machines while all sorts of consultants and specialists smeared her belly with cold blue gel and gazed at grainy monitors with furrowed brows.

Every two weeks measurements were taken of each embryo and nerves were shredded waiting to hear whether one embryo was outgrowing the other. This became a regular manicurists nightmare for both of us. And especially hellish for me, what with my funny turns whenever I hear someone say anything even vaguely medical. Afterwards we'd scrutinise the results, comparing the measurements with the previous ones and looking for any clues that the highly trained, highly specialised medical experts at UCL might have missed. What did these people know anyway with their years of study and their banks of high tech, highly expensive, hyper sensitive ultra-sound equipment, compared to an accountant and a recruitment consultant armed with a plastic ruler and a £4.99 Rymans calculator?

So there we were in a 2 up 2 down rabbit hutch that was bursting at the seams with just the 3 of us. This wasn't going to cope with 2 new inmates and their paraphenalia. So, with what was eventually 10 days before the birth we managed to move to a bigger house, thanks to much sterling organisation from my wife, and much pounds sterling from my in-laws.

Lucy-Mae had her new room, (a tribute to the myriad shades of the colour pink that resulted in a combined hue that even Barbara Cartland would have baulked at), and the nursery was laid out with the usual baby accoutrements including twin cots. Twin cots?? Two cots?? Wow! That brings it home to you like a sledgehammer! Twin buggy, two car seats, two high chairs, two bath seats.... Hmmmm....... OK, this is real.

Whatever your own reactions and feelings the funniest thing we noticed was the reaction of friends and family. After a fair bit of reaction we realised they tended to fall into two distinct camps; the "Oh-no, you poor things!" or the "Twins! But that's wonderful!", which we worked out tended to come typically from either parents who's own babies were nightmares, or parents who's own babies were angels. From our own experience Lucy-Mae, despite having some serious medical problems, was an absolutely dream as a baby. Sleeping through from 12 weeks, always keeping clean, never crying unless for an obvious reason, never picking up anything she shouldn't, so in short the idyllic first baby.

So we had our expectations which probably made us fall somewhere in between both camps. Yep, having been through our first, sure it was going to be hard work but, hey, they'll be just like Lucy-Mae, won't they?? Won't they?......

At that moment I suspect that someone, somewhere, gave an evil laugh and I have a sneaking suspicion that laugh was coming, in stereo, from Debbies womb.....

When expecting a twin birth the expectant father and mother initially take different routes to deal with the impending event. Mothers instinctively look for help in numerous publications or through their network of friends for women who have gone through similar experiences. Fathers act a little more.... how can I say?....... "manly" about it all. Whilst Debbie trawled through the volumes of text written on the subject, pouring over the detail of what to expect and how the miracle of twin pregnancies occur, I tended to focus only on the bits that I thought mattered.

Expecting identical twins I remember that one of the paragraphs that Debbie read out alluded to the fact that there were some indications that a high level of virility in the male can result in the incident of identical twins. Well, that was it for me. Conclusive proof of something I had suspected all along; I was Mr Supersperm. I had the sort of sperm that could travel at unprecedented speed, and with unnerving accuracy. My sperm could swim faster than an Olympic swimmer and had more stamina than even the fittest marathon runner, they could leap buildings, shatter windows and split the female egg from 100 yards. Goddamit, on a good day and given the right mood, they could probably even split the atom! I told the world and his wife about the very, very factual book packed with obvious whole truths that we had found, and even considered getting that particular paragraph made into a T-Shirt.

Oh yes, we were Mono Chorionic and proud of it!

It's fairly telling, I think, that it has taken me 18 months to get round to writing my thoughts and experiences on being a parent to twins. Long gone are the days of spare time on my hands although, admittedly, these disappeared soon after our first daughter, Lucy-Mae, was born back in 2002. There had been lately, however, a slight respite, a gradual relaxation to our routine that comes as toddlers grow and become children. Lucy-Mae was positively independent now even to the point of being helpful around the house! So why did we want to go and ruin all that by ending up back at square one with a new baby?

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. "A sibling for Lucy-Mae", we thought, "someone to keep her company when we're too old and in a home!" Such are the thoughts of older parents! Plus my wife Debbie didn't want to be pushing a buggy whilst pushing 40 (something!! Ooooh, I'm gonna pay for that one!). And so it was decided.

I remember the first scan so well, who can forget when it has such life changing repercussions! Twins? Why was the woman with the scanner in her hand talking about twins? It didn't register for a few seconds in my brain that she was talking about us. Debbie was in shock, I was elated. A couple of hours later, after Debbie had got her head round it all, and I'd worked out we needed a bigger house, bigger car and bigger overdraft, I was in shock.