"Triplets?! How did you cope?!"
Answering the questions everyone asks
Hurrah! December isn’t only Christmas month, it’s also the month my daughters were born.
If you’ve been reading Wendy’s World for a while, you might recall what a surprise the whole of 1986 was. As I described in How I Met My Match, that year started with me meeting the love of my life, Ian, through a lonely hearts ad and culminated with the birth of our daughters.
My diary detailing pregnancy, birth and the early months caring for the babies, was serialised in Parents magazine (UK), with follow-up installments at a year and three years.
I joined the Twins and Multiple Births Association (now Twins Trust), which had offered me excellent advice during pregnancy, and ended up voluntarily coordinating their support group for parents of triplets, quads and more for several years.
The number of multiple births in the UK was increasing at that time due to advances in fertility treatment. Carrying triplets or more is considered high risk, and through my contact with other parents I encountered some very sad stories of baby loss, children left with lifelong health problems due to prematurity, and family breakdown due to the stress of caring for a large instant family. I realised how lucky I’d been having a relatively straightforward pregnancy and delivery.
It seems a lifetime since complete strangers stopped me on the street, unable to believe their eyes when they saw the triple buggy approaching. But re-reading this piece I wrote for The Guardian newspaper in 1994, reminds me of how uncomfortable I was about us being “on display”.
Wendy Varley on the trouble with triplets
Published in The Guardian, 18 October 1994, p10/11.
I don’t usually hide in the bathroom at parties, but on this occasion I have good reason. My children, triplet girls aged seven, have come to the party with me and one has just gone through the kitchen, causing a sudden buzz of excitement.
“She’s a triplet? You’re kidding!” comes one woman’s voice from downstairs.
“No, look, the other two are playing outside,” says another.
“Jesus, can you imagine having triplets?” gasps a third.
I’m on the landing waiting for the loo and can hear every word. They are all single women, and they are discussing my daughters in high-pitched tones that would make you think they had sighted fairies, not children, at the bottom of the garden. Once they get over the initial shock, they dwell on the cost of having triplets, the hassle and, inevitably, the gynaecological implications.
As soon as the bathroom is free, I dash in, lock the door and stay there a long time in the hope that the conversation will soon take a different turn.
When a woman has a child, it’s perfectly normal for her to rattle on about the birth to anyone who will listen. But after a few days, everyone, including her, is a bit fed up of talking about dilated cervixes and pain relief and the subject is dropped. I have spent seven and a half years politely answering questions, often from complete strangers, about the birth of my children. I have done – and still do – other things besides being a mother, but once people hear the word “triplets”, their perception of me changes, curiosity gets the better of them and they trot out questions they wouldn’t normally dream of asking. Having triplets has made me public property.
In their infancy, I had no choice but to transport the children in a conspicuous triple buggy. Wheeling them around Greenwich Park, I’d get waylaid by foreign tourists asking to photograph us. One man forcibly stopped the pushchair and got into a bizarre dispute with me, arguing that, because he had never seen triplets before, they couldn’t possibly be triplets. I wished at times like this that the buggy came with big rotating blades on the front.
I asked Ian, my partner, if men bombarded him with questions. “Occasionally,” he said thoughtfully. “Usually when they’ve just had their first child and wonder how we managed. Never anything gynaecological. One or two have suggested I must be very virile.”
Here are 10 questions you should never ask a mother of triplets (or twins, quads or quins, for that matter), complete with my own answers.
1. Did you have fertility treatment?
No.
2. When did you find out you were having triplets?
At the first scan, when I was four months pregnant.
3. Was it a shock?
Yes, just a bit.
4. Did you get really big?
Yes. Think Moby Dick.
5. Did you have a Caesarean?
No, a vaginal delivery, and before you ask, they were six weeks early, there was a two-hour gap between first and second, 12 minutes between second and third (the last was breech), and they weighed 4lb 8oz each.
6. How on earth did you cope?
For the first few years, I’m not sure I did. The children thrived but I was exhausted. No matter how much attention I gave them, I felt I was leaving somebody out. But they’re turning out brilliantly, so I must have been doing OK. They get on so well together now, I think perhaps I have fewer problems than a woman with children of different ages.
7. Did you get any help?
No financial help, apart from the usual child benefit. Physically, a little for the first few weeks from my council’s home help service.
8. Are they identical?
Yes, although they dress differently and have different haircuts, so it’s easy to tell them apart. They also have different characters but similar interests.
9. Does it run in the family?
Great Aunt Florrie, now 103, had many children, including twins and triplets. But it’s fraternal (non-identical) twins that tend to run in families.
10. Will you have any more?
Mind your own business.
Once this is published, I’m going to make photocopies and keep them handy for the next time anyone mentions the dreaded T word. If you’ve had a multiple birth yourself, I suggest you write up your own Q&A and keep it on you at all times. You’re going to need it.
One question I didn’t answer in that feature was: What are the odds? About one in every 150,000 deliveries will be identical triplets. It annoys me when I see reputable news sources get it wrong.
What I would add now, looking back, is that every milestone felt rushed. On their last day at nursery school, I wept in the headteacher’s office, distraught at saying farewell to this sanctuary full of friendly faces, music and art, woodwork tools, sand play, tricycles and counting beads.
At the other end of their educational journey, my daughters’ university graduations took place in different corners of the country during the same week. I made it to all three, full of pride, but exhausted, feeling thinly-sliced.
But what they might have lacked in one-to-one parental attention, my daughters made up for in their shared camaraderie. Once they’d emerged from the terrible twos they were the best of friends. They’ve championed each other throughout their lives and it’s a delight to see their mutual support continuing now that they are themselves mothers.
The question they were most often asked (apart from “Are you psychic?”) was: What’s it like being an identical triplet? They usually answered that they have never known anything else.
Chatting on the phone with Becky while writing this, she said that growing up as a triplet gave her a valuable buffer, but also some social anxiety once she had to make her own way as an individual. She was used to being part of a group and viewed as part of a group.
I’ll close with this poem by Becky, The Three Graces, which beautifully describes the bond between her and her sisters.
Do you have thoughts on or questions about twins, triplets or more? These days I enjoy having conversations about it! Please do comment below if you are able.
Thanks to all who read, liked, shared and /or commented on my piece last week, The InterBet, about my amazing mum, Betty. There were some great tips in the comments about remembering to annotate family photographs so that younger generations know who they’re of, where to get old VHS family movies transferred to digital, making memory boxes. And, yes, recording voices and stories while we can.
As for sharing news at lightning speed,
said: “My granny was the one who would share news and gossip around the family quicker than you could blink. My cousin once said despairingly to his mother about his exam results, ‘I suppose you’ve told Granny and she’s told everyone else, the postman, the lady in Spar…’ ‘The lady in Spar’ is now our family shorthand for any fast spreading news.”Clicking the heart and/or sharing this piece will help other people find my writing.
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Until next time!
© Wendy Varley 2024
Raising 2 daughters of different ages is giving me a very different perspective on being a triplet. They get along well but the little one with a 4 year age gap still constantly needs my intervention to defend her wants & needs! How tenacious and assertive she has had to be about what she really wants (so things won’t be thrust at her or she won’t be treated like an animated prop) boggles my mind!
And the older one has to be told off a lot more to protect her sister from boisterous play ideas above her level. Being told off more has an impact. But she also learns a lot of skills by taking on that responsibility. Classic older child situation where she hones being ‘teacherly’, but is worried about overstepping.
Yeah, as triplets we did still fight or have power struggles, I know we must have and esp in our twos. But, crucially, we were all the same size and so we knew we wdn’t get very far by it. The pecking order was very different & rivalry seems far more pronounced when there is an age gap or a size difference. None of us were ‘usurped’ by our sibling. There was little to no jealousy that I can remember. Instead I remember being immensely proud of their successes like a team-mate would be.
But, one aspect strangers didn’t know is that birth order still matters! People always said ‘triplets!!!’ And then laughed and asked “which of you three came first?” Always. This perhaps ensured that Olivia was the ‘leader’ in my mind and that Becky was somehow the ‘younger one’ even by only 10 minutes or so. I was always the middle one in my head, even if by a tiny margin.
So you can add that to the list of questions you should probably never ask a very young multiple - ‘who came first?’ Children might internalise the 1st, second or 3rd answer in terms of dominance or who the leader of games should be, as children often seem to put some hierarchy into their play. I know I did.
For example, if we played Batman, then Olivia being the leader out of the three was who I remember being default Batman. Becky would be Robin and I would be the ‘character part’, usy or one of the villains. Unless Olivia really desperately wanted to be Catwoman or the Joker or the Penguin or something (the baddies are all fun roles!), in which case I’d be Batman. Becky rarely seemed to get a choice who she played, she was always the sidekick, always Robin… that’s how I remember it.
I'm a fraternal twin. Because we were born in the dark ages pre-scans Mum didn't know there were going to be two of us until about six weeks before we were due - her midwife just thought she had a big, bony baby!