ARE THEY IDENTICAL?
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A FATHER’S STORY
“Are they identical?“ everybody asked. Now, as any parent of same sex twins will tell you (and parents of one-of-each twins for that matter), this is the one question you are likely to be asked more times than any other. I knew the answer, of course. ”No“ I replied. But how did I know?
Well, it’s quite simple really. At the first scan we were given the news that it was twins. We’d told the scanning lady that we didn’t want to know the sex of our baby and she’d said that at this stage she wouldn’t be able to tell anyway. Once she’d found two babies in there she said that she had this feeling in her bones that they were boys. Whether they were boys or not, she could tell that they were not identical. We didn’t ask how she knew that , she was an expert. And what did we know about twins? Well, um, nothing.
Anyway, several months and several scans later Jonathan and Peter arrived. So the lady had guessed right (was it a guess or did she know) about them being boys, and the medical staff had confirmed that they were not identical. We could see that anyway, they had different shaped heads and faces, one ate all the time while the other slept all the time (however two and a half years have changed that), and Peter was nearly twenty-five per-cent heavier than his elder brother Jonathan.
The years rolled by, or so it seemed. In fact it was only two years. People couldn't tell them apart, well, we could, as could other family members and friends who saw them frequently, but no one else seemed to be able to. The question that used to be “Are they identical?” had now changed to “They’re identical, aren’t they?” Yet still “No”, we would reply. But had we been given the wrong information? How did the experts know they were not identical? We began to have our doubts.
We started looking at all those little similarities which we thought were just coincidence. Their first teeth within a day of each other. Their second teeth within hours of each other. In fact, their eight teeth in virtually the same, unorthodox, order and every tooth within seven days of its twin. Then the milestones like turning over, crawling, sitting up, standing, walking, the same story. And then, of course, the identical grey eyes, the same fair hair with the brillo-pad tangle at the back, the same ability to make very loud, very high-pitched singing sounds. And what about playing near each other and, without any apparent signal, just swapping toys? And even both of them getting covered in spots when they had chickenpox? But that’s another story!
And so we decided to try and find out for real whether or not they were identical. We started by writing to the hospital where they were born. The reply came back that they were definitely not identical as they had had separate placentas. We already knew that this old wives’ tale was a fallacy and so we needed to look further, knowing that their eyes, their hair and their blood groups were the same. Some friends had recently taken their twin sons to be examined by Dr. Elizabeth Bryan, a consultant paediatrician at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital who has for many years specialised in twins, to try to determine whether or not they were identical. Apart from things like tooth patterns, growth charts, hair colour and style (natural rather than coiffured) they’d had feet put together to see whether one’s right foot and the other’s left foot looked like a pair. And so we started doing this with Jonathan’s and Peter’s feet and hands. Of course, we knew our own children’s differences and found it difficult to pick out the similarities, even harder when they wouldn’t keep limbs still for more than half a second. Meanwhile, people were finding them more and more similar.
Let the experts decide. This was the only way forward. And so off we trooped on the tube to Stamford Brook to visit Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital. Dr. Bryan looked at photographs, hands, feet, teeth, hair, ears, and chatted with us about our experiences of the past two and a half years. And the result? Well, she said her money would be on them being identical (but she didn’t say how much she would stake on it). And the experts present at the birth and before were giving out flawed information based on preconceived wisdom which gives a wrong result for one third of identical twins, that’s about two sets a day in England and Wales.
Was the money spent on this assessment money well spent? It was certainly better spent than the £1 for excruciatingly awful cappuccinos from the hospital coffee shop. That they are identical explains a lot that has happened so far in their lives and means that we shall have to make an even greater effort than hitherto to make sure that they develop as individuals. We were glad to find out . Yes, the exercise was worthwhile.
And what did we learn from all this? First, the people who attend mothers at birth probably know next to nothing about twins beyond the fact that they come in twos. And second, a lot of old wives’ tales are wrong but, being a man, I would say that, wouldn’t I? And now, when asked that question, I reply “Yes!”.
