Imagine a fantastical scenario where you and your partner desire two children. Resources, health, time, etc. aren’t an issue. In this scenario would you prefer if you had both children at the same time (twins) or a year apart from each other?
A year apart.
(Actually, I would prefer to space them two years apart.)
I worked with a guy who had twins as their first children. His life was hard for a while (I’ll just leave it there), but he didn’t know parenthood any other way. Another person I know had a single child and then twins later - usually the 2nd child is easier, but the twins were much harder than the single first kid.
I vote for a year or more apart.
So, Irish Twins?
Newborns require a lot more work and interrupted sleep than 12 month olds. Definitely a year apart.
My Son has 2 older girls, a set of twin boys.
He claims doing this on a bulk level was way easier.
He’s very hands on Dad.
I don’t believe his wife would say twins were easier from the pregnancy POV.
But they have carried it off pretty well, as I’ve watched, over the years.
(Disclaimer: no kid was ever as hard as their middle child, she was/is always the issue in any activity. Any)
My wife, who had a lot of experience with babies and young children, insisted that she wouldnt have a second chiled until the first was out of nappies (diapers).
Adopt them!
You are helping kids who would otherwise be in care (and avoiding the sleepless nights of new borns…)
That’s a big consideration. My kids are 20 months apart. Thankfully my eldest was ready to be trained when the other was born.
I had one, then twins for the 2nd/3rd kid. If you were gonna have 2 more after the first having them at the same time is easier. It does mean at least at young ages you do everything in bulk/together. You make two bottles at once, you put them for naps together, you schedule doctors appointments back-to-back. They sleep at the same time, get a bath at the same time, eat at the same time. Its definitely not 2x the work like having two one year a part might be.
One year apart isn’t really twice the work either. My kids were 13 months apart- and I didn’t rush getting off the bottle and toilet training etc with the oldest. So basically I went an extra three or six or whatever months, all at once. I didn’t plan to have them that close , but in retrospect, I think it was better than getting rid of diapers for two or three years and then going back.
My boys were 15 months apart. It wasn’t bad except when baby 1 figured out baby 2 wasn’t just some passing fad that would disappear. He didn’t speak yet (this child spoke late but spoke in full sentences a few days or so after his first word other than mama dada). Anyway I was home with the two of them all was find, then I started nursing the youngest, and number one got upset and crying uncontrollably trying to pull the baby out of my lap. I called my mil and he calmed while she talked to him on the phone, but went right back into crisis mode when we hung up. Y’all I called my mother. I never did that. She tried to come, but missed the house, it was night she didn’t see well at night. Then thankfully hubster came home from work early and managed to calm number one down. I’ve never had twins, but it would have avoided that issue. By the by my first son was and easy and easy going baby/kid. This incident was completely unlike him.
As it turned out, there’s a four-year gap between our two. That worked out well because by the time the baby started toddling, her brother was starting school.
I would have loved to have had twins, but was too frightened by the (slightly increased) risk. I was more frightened by the thought something might go wrong at birth, than motivated by the advantage of twins.
I’ve read, and find credible, the suggestion that a gap of around three years is most difficult for the older child. My and my sibs found the 8 year gap, and the 1 year gap, did not cause trauma, but the 5 year gap didn’t work as well, and the 3 year gap was even more difficult.
Twins don’t feed or sleep or wake or cry in sync (maybe some do). If you have two kids one year apart, you’ll have two years of broken sleep. If you have twins, you’ll need help, or have one year of zero sleep.
My brother and his wife had twins as their only children. His words were “twins are hell. They’re GREAT, but they’re hell.”
I suspect they would have found a singleton easier (not easy!) after twins.
My choice: I’d go with the twins. Give me the period of absolute hell once. I never wanted my own kids, but if I’m going through pregnancy, birth, and the newborn/toddler stage…I really only want to go through that once.
I disagree strongly with the idea that twins are “hell”. We have twin boys that will soon graduate from high school. They’re our only children.
While I’ve often joked that we may just be too ignorant to know any different since they’re our only experience, I wouldn’t dream of having it any other way.
When they were babies and toddlers we got them on a solid schedule and they pretty much did everything at the same time. There were very few nights of getting up with one and then getting up with the other, so not all that different than having one.
There are a lot of conveniences, especially in the early years. Double doctor visits, same school, mostly same friends.
My wife is an absolute rock star and we’ve managed to play man to man defense, so to speak, and work together to make sure they both get the individual attention they need. Divide and conquer has been a big theme in our house.
They have also been incredibly close from day one and so tended to easily entertain themselves by playing and interacting with each other so in that way they were less demanding. They’re still super close and pretty much share everything. They’re headed off to college this fall on a similar path, at least at the beginning, and will be there for each other.
My personal nightmare would be having two far enough apart to be in completely different life stages and so having to deal with two very different sets of needs and issues such as one starting preschool and one still in diapers.
Just a few thoughts from a twin parent who has been there and done that.
I have a friend with a staggering 11 children (you couldn’t pay me enough). She insists they were all planned and she and her husband wanted a big family. My response was “Yeah, right,” until she pointed out that, except when she had twins, she never had two in diapers.
I asked her once whether twins was harder than a baby and a young preschooler
Interestingly, she said that it was six of one, as far as she was concerned, with identical twins (she has a set of boy/girl, and a set of identical boys), because she had no difficulty getting them on one schedule, so they napped together, ate together, etc. But the boy & girl were very difficult to get in sync.
She nixed the idea of a baby and a toddler, though. She said, two, in different-sized diapers would be crazy-making. She also thought a toddler might be jealous of a newborn nursing, but a 3-year-old would not.
Personally, I was one-and-done.
That was my wife and me. No way I would ever wish twins on parents.
My parents, on the other hand, had two children just 12.5 months apart (so not technically Irish twins) and it didn’t seem to faze them that much.
I would prefer to have both at once.
My sister had twins – a boy and a girl. When people said it must be hard to manage, she would say that she didn’t know; she had no experience with just one.