Two and a half years ago, I birthed extraordinary twins.

They are identical. Specifically, they’re monochorionic diamniotic – in utero, they shared a placenta while in my womb, with separate amniotic sacs. Yet, the membrane between them was barely visible on the ultrasound.

During the pregnancy, I was constantly monitored for twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS), a condition occurring in monochorionic pregnancies where one twin takes more nutrients than the other, with potentially fatal consequences.

When my doctor explained this possible complication to me, I was terrified. This type of pregnancy meant my body was becoming a concoction of risk; in addition to TTTS, there was an increased likelihood of gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia and premature birth.

Image by: Janosch Lino and edited by Archer Magazine

My twins arrived early, at 35 weeks. After a five-day stay in hospital, we were cleared to be discharged home.

Sitting on the edge of my hospital bed, looking down at my tiny twins in their little car seats, I remember feeling as though I was being knocked over by a wave. I sobbed.

My twin-specialist midwife put her arm around me and said, “It’s normal for everything to hit when it’s time to go home.”

She hugged me. I will always remember that gesture for its kindness and necessity. I – and my twins – seemed impossibly fragile, and life seemed insurmountable.

Life with my remarkable twins is indeed hard. To add to the mix, I’m a queer neurodivergent parent.

My twins split my gaze – something I thought was impossible. One eye on each. In the early days, I’d be balancing one baby in my arms while I changed the other. I’d perform incredible contortions and feats of strength in daily mundane tasks, such as tandem feeding.

My arms became macho. My house became full, and a mess. I became a mess, psychologically – as well as being covered in spit-up, yellow shit and nappy cream.

I’m also an only child myself, meaning the existential shock was profound.

Towards the end of the twins’ first year of life, strange and exciting things were happening to me.

My non-binary self began to emerge. I shifted myself aesthetically: complete with binding, a buzz cut and septum piercing. My appetite for expanding my queer chosen family became huge. I say this because at times, frankly, I wanted everyone in my home to fuck off. My partner, my twins, my dog – all of them were driving me, quite literally, mad. I just wanted to not be touched or needed.

Yet at the same time, my love was growing, cosmically. It felt like an active (and exhausting) love – as bell hooks would define it in all about love – where love holds space not only for kindness and affection, but anger, transformation and growth.

This state of rolling contradiction has persisted.

I think it will be the constant weather state of being a twin parent. I’m grateful to my family for forcing me to accept the messiness of love. They drive me mad, but they need me, and I need them.

People need people. I knew connectedness was important before, but as my twins entered their second year, I began to feel it like a storm in my bones. 

It was also during this second year that I realised that twin-time moves oddly. Long days, short years.

Time is wrought with waiting, boredom and fears like, Am I a good enough parent? But then there’s joy, too. Never have I felt more exposed with a chest-full of twin babies than when coming out, but also when entering my local rhyme-time as a messy twin parent. Around me, I see parents with one well-behaved baby on their lap.

I hesitate when someone asks me the gender of my twins, something which people are often keen to know. The answer is I don’t know.

In an odd way, these experiences of multiplicity and complexity make total queer sense.

I look at my twins and see their shared nonsensical (to outsiders) language and seemingly telepathic channel. I watch them understand each other, pass a toy, start a game or a vicious fight, which suddenly pivots to hand-holding or food-giving. When I marvel at these things, I’m reminded of the queers with whom I’m twinned with, without sharing a womb.

Us queer siblings also have our own language: a glance across a room, a hanky code, a gesture, a master doc of queer recommendations.

From lesbians caring for gay men during the HIV crisis, to keeping secrets and hiding one another, from sharing raves and grief to railing each other, through cooking, feeding and growing with one another to fostering structures of mutual aid – we rely on each other to survive.

Flying in the face of biological determinism as always, we are bound to each other through unrest. This is twin care: connection to one another as the basis for life, rather than individualism that strives only for sole survival.

The intimacy of bonds against systemic oppression are – in the non-heteronormative sense – familial.

Twin siblinghood demands what the authors of The Care Manifesto would call “promiscuous care”, whereby we multiply the people we care for and experiment with the ways in which we care.

This type of care reminds us that we are always fundamentally and existentially together, it just takes a little more work when shit gets tough. 

As writer and “wayshower” Christabel Mintah-Galloway reminds us, as concerned as we can get about setting boundaries, we need to remember that care (and indeed, people) are messy. Twin care doesn’t move in a straight line – it’s more of a frayed and ever-evolving loop.

My twins are genetically identical, so it’s no surprise they look alike.

Yet their characters and tastes are worlds apart: one is relentlessly determined and loves toy cars, the other is sensitive and likes to draw.

Getting dressed in the morning is fraught with their desires for different clothes; inevitably I forget what they choose among the haze of milk and breakfast cereal.

I see them from the back – so I can’t recognise the subtle differences in their faces – and I suddenly can’t tell them apart. They also can’t bear to be apart, although sometimes they can’t bear to be together.

My twins are nearly three years old now.

They are beginning to develop language beyond their own private code, asking often for “stickies”: their word for ice cream, which my friends and I have now also adopted. Their personalities are becoming increasingly distinct.

Recently, they’ve taken to developing dance routines and songs when they get into their buggy and have their nappies changed (no, we haven’t tackled potty training, yet!).

When we separate them and take them out for some solo time, they are subdued and well-behaved, almost sad. When they reunite, they laugh and hug and become themselves again: the usual double trouble.

Twin care, or double trouble, shows us how we are not ourselves without others.

It shows us how easily we could be different to – and the same as – those we love. We can divide, and still care in multiple ways.