Amanda talks twins in light of new post

The news has been welcomed by Lurgan mum of twins Amanda Steele who shared with the ‘MAIL’ some of the issues faced when bringing up twins.

Amanda and her husband William’s twins - Lucy and Oliver - were born on July 23, 2010. Now four, they’ve three weeks under their belts at King’s Park Nursery School.

Their mum said: “We tried for years with IVF. We lost one then ended up with a double blessing.”

Although she won’t benefit from the new dedicated health visitor, Amanda said support is very important for parents of twins or multiple births.

She commented: “It would be interesting to know what these specialist health visitors are going to do. We had a really nice health visitor called Louise who couldn’t have been any better.

“I was lucky because I had my mum to help every day. I suppose there’s some people who don’t have that help, so a dedicated health visitor could be very important for them.

“In terms of things like potty training it was difficult to get advice on what to do for twins. I ended up Googling it and asking other parents of twins for tips. This is an area that could be improved on.

“Behavioural advice would also be good. A lot of people assume twins do everything at the same pace. Lucy was on solids before Oliver and she was potty trained before he was. She’s also a lot better sleeper than him. They have very different personalities yet they are very protective of each other.

“You really need two people when you have two babies. When one cries the other tends to cry and you can’t give both of them your undivided attention. They both had reflux so we had no sleep for the first nine months.”