My husband says I’m a snob. In fact, he has gone so far as to suggest that my other twin mom friends are snobs, too.
And you know what? He’s not wrong. But we’re sort of snobs by necessity.
Any new mom knows that the general public really has a thing for babies. People can’t help themselves. But moms of multiples know that people are more than twice as crazy for twin babies. Every single person you pass on the street or at the store has to make a comment. Sometimes it’s kind (“bless you, aren’t they beautiful!”), sometimes it’s annoying (“bet you’ve got your hands full”), sometimes it’s almost rude (“better you than me”). And sometimes it’s just plain stupid (“oh, two boys?” [they're literally dressed in pink and blue] “No, one of each.” “Wow, are they identical?”) But, seriously, EVERY SINGLE PERSON feels the need to say something.
It’s sort of sweet with the first five people. But you soon realize that stopping to chat with all of these strangers is doubling the time it takes to run your errand. The errand you had to plan hours ahead of time, the errand it took you 30 minutes to actually get out of the house and into the car to run. And you stop finding it sweet, and start to have to work to not roll your eyes with every comment.
Two of my twin mom friends and I go for a walk around a nearby pond every week. It’s nice to be out of the house and moving, nice to chat with other people dealing with the same sorts of things (their twins are 4 and 6 months, respectively). Not surprisingly, the three double strollers (and my dog) make for quite a spectacle. But really, does every single person we pass on the 3-mile walk have to say something? We quickly stopped responding to people unless they asked a direct question. If someone just makes a comment to their friend, we don’t even look up. If they say something to us that isn’t a question, we might smile, but definitely don’t break stride. And even direct questions get answered as quickly as possible.
There’s only one person we’ll pause for. Another twin mom.
Then, suddenly we’re all chatty. We ask about how many weeks the other woman’s babies were born at, whether they had any NICU time, etc. No stupid questions about boy/girl twins being identical. We talk in shorthand. MOMO twins, TTTS, NICU… We ask about the other’s double stroller. We don’t ask stupid crap like “how tired are you.” What kind of dumb-ass question is that? This is why my husband says we’re snobs.
And once, just once, we passed a woman with triplet toddlers. We paused and nodded in respect. And as we continued our walk, all three of us looked at each other and said, “can you imagine how bad it would be if there were three?”
Your post is funny. As a twin mom, I totally get it. When people asked me if my daughter and son were identical I always said “yes, except for the one penis!”
But as many comments as we got, I did like them. It sort of fed into my Supermom complex. Let’s be honest, it is harder with twins, but it is manageable (our secret, twin mom to twin mom!) So when people would say how hard it must be and how much they “gave me credit” for doing it…I just ate it up. It made some of those hard days a little easier.
You are SO right. Everything you’ve said here is true. I have definitely become a “twin snob” as you say. And it’s WORSE now that I’m going to my local Mothers of Multiples meetings regularly.
PS – I’m so glad my boys ARE identical. I don’t know how you deal with that question when you have one of each sex. I wgive you credit for not smacking people upside the head!
AS a twin mom I totally understand where you are coming from. I used to laugh my butt off when people would ask me how I could tell my boys apart (they are clearly fraternal). I would always respond the same way….I just look at them!