Double Trouble: Twins and How to Survive Them. Emma Mahony

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finally appeared, I think few would have mixed him up with some 5lb weakling.

      There are three twin mix-up tales in the IVF history books. The first was when a white mother gave birth to black twins in the summer of 2002 here in Britain. The sperm was wrongly mixed with the woman’s eggs after a laboratory error in an NHS clinic, and the legal outcome determining who are the parents has yet to be settled.

      The other two happened elsewhere in the world. The first was in 1993 in Holland where twin boys, one white and one black, were born to Willem and Wilma Stuart after two samples of sperm became accidentally mixed before being used to fertilize Wilma’s eggs. The biological father made no attempts to gain custody of his twin, but the family keeps in touch in the event that his biological son may want to meet him one day.

      The second case happened in 1998 in New York when two lots of embryos were mixed and both women, Donna Fasano and Deborah Rogers, were implanted with what they took to be their own embryos. Only one of the pregnancies turned out to be successful, and the mother had one black and one white twin. There followed a difficult legal battle, leading to the black twin being handed over to his biological mother. Despite the recrimination between the parents and the hospital, the now four-year-old twins still visit each other.

      Natural or not so natural?

      The folic acid factor

      New research² also suggests that women who take folic acid are nearly twice as likely to give birth to twins as women who do not. A higher rate of twin births in relation to folic acid was first noticed in an earlier Hungarian trial. The recent Swedish research team examined Swedish records since 1994. The scientists found that among 2,569 women who had used folic acid supplements, the rate of twin births was 2.8 per cent – nearly double the normal level of 1.5 per cent. They are unsure why folic acid might be responsible for producing more twins. It is possible that folic acid encourages multiple ovulations or the implantation of more than one egg. It might also prevent the spontaneous abortion of one or more foetuses occurring in women who do not take folic acid.

      The official advice is still for women to take 400mcg of supplemented folic acid before conception and for the first three months of pregnancy (see also www.hsis.org – Health Supplements Information Service).

      I took 12 times the recommended dosage because my first baby was born with a cleft lip and palate, so I read the study with interest. But, then again, I also fell into all of the other categories that made me more likely to have twins: I was over 35, taller and heavier (charming) than your average British mother, a twin myself who had already had one child.

      TWIN PREGNANCY VITAL STATISTICS³

       Natural conception:

      

The chance of having twins rises steadily as the mother gets older.

      

The peak age is 35 to 39 for European women.

      

Women are more likely to have twins the more children they have, independent of their age.

      

Fraternal or non-identical twins are more common if there is a presence of twins on the mother’s side of the family (contrary to popular opinion, the father’s side makes no difference).

      

Identical twins are random and occur in one in three of all twin births (although scientists are still trying to explain why they occur more in some families).

      

You can insure against the extra cost of having twins before your 14th week of pregnancy, providing you are not having IVF treatment and have yet to be scanned by your doctor. At the time of going to print, insurance company Marcus Hearn (0207 739 3444) will pay out £1,000 for a minimum premium of £42.

       Assisted conception:

      

Since the very first test-tube baby Louise Brown was born in Britain in 1978, in vitro fertilization now accounts for around 8,000 babies born every year in Britain.

      

One in four IVF pregnancies results in twins.

      

The number of triplet births has risen from 91 in 1980 to 262 in 2002.

      

The number of twin births has grown from 6,400 in 1980 to 8,500 in 2002.

      

In Britain alone, the number of cycles of treatment has risen from 28,000 in 1991 to 44,000 in 2002.

      

A quarter of infertile couples succeed with IVF.

       THREE Eating and Exercising for Three

      Make no mistake: one good thing about a twin pregnancy is that you get to eat a lot, and most of the weight will go on the babies. All of us who have had guilt issues surrounding food can now look forward to nine months of bingeing, and even longer if you hope to breastfeed. For a twin pregnancy, you are not only invited to eat one-and-a-half times more than for a singleton pregnancy, it is practically a responsibility.¹

      There is also enough evidence now to support the welcome news that in a twin pregnancy there is a direct correlation between higher maternal weight gain and better birth outcomes.² So, what are you waiting for? Order that Fortnum & Mason hamper now. This should be the rekindling of a long love affair with food.

      During my own twin pregnancy, which was remarkably trouble-free and ran the whole course to term at 40 weeks, I went food mad. I decided to allow myself absolutely no restrictions on the amount of food I ate, and arrived at work having visited the deli with two plastic bags from the greengrocer and the baker en route. For all my no-holds-barred approach, I was very picky about the type and quality of food I ate. In my first pregnancy, I had put on a lot of weight by eating badly, pretending that my penchant for crisps, cider and Maltesers was a craving. It took me 18 months to shift the excess stone (or two).

      Second time around, I had learnt my lesson about office vending machines and was careful about the type of food I ate. I would bring in as much fruit and raw veg as I could carry – carrots, cucumber, tomatoes, cauliflower, apples, bananas and grapes. Added

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