It is dramatic the shift from working full time to being at home with your babies. A precious experience, and one I could never hand over to any nanny or childminder. I love seeing my babies change daily and grow more and more excited by my presence. If there is anything to make you feel really, really special, it is your baby’s beaming smile.

But this is not to say that I don’t think longingly about work, surprising as it may sound for those still tortured by their daily grind. Applying your mind to a task, planning it carefully, and seeing it through is, in retrospect, the easily controlled, quickly satisfying reality of having a job. Your working days (mostly) follow an expected shape. You buy your coffee in the morning, browse through emails, deal with a few colleagues, perhaps meet a client, walk out for lunch, go slow at your desk whilst digesting, take a back seat in a meeting, get excited about a new project, think about wrapping up for the day, and over and over and over. What’s more, however long your hours, you are at liberty at some point to go home and slump in front of the TV.

My new days are chaotic and full of plans that are half seen through or given up on for want of letting the baby sleep a bit longer. There is no going home at the end of the day, or slumping for more than a minute or two. In this new order, or lack of it, I realise I must give myself fully to one sole purpose – keeping my babies happy and thriving. This is my current full time job, my interest, my desire. Each day, and new stage of development is a project, and successes, such as a baby joyfully seizing and shaking a rattle for the first time or sleeping an extra half hour at night, are to be celebrated just in the same way as the well struck deal or challenging sale.

So here’s to tonight.

Yesterday I cycled for the first time since last October. The wind tugged at my hair and my leg muscles remembered their existence. The twin’s father pushed them round the supermarket whilst picking up what we needed for dinner. I proudly turned into our road, fresh faced and exhilarated and saw him and our green pram on the pavement. We all walked home together and though that evening we did eat until well past 10pm, the cycling was lovely.

Having successfully arranged two sleeping babies beside me, I shall begin.

I would not usually describe myself as the possessive type, though friends and family may beg to differ. I would say I usually find it easy to share things and allow other people to use my possessions. When it comes to sharing my babies I feel very differently.

Since the arrival of our two babies we have had a succession of visitors, all intended to help us out. These two have enjoyed plenty of arms to lie in, chests to doze on and willing pushers of their pram. There have been hordes of well-meaning types in our flat suggesting I take myself off for a quiet nap whilst they hold the babies. For all the good intentions, I cannot enjoy seeing them in other people’s arms, let alone sleep well without them near me. I can relax when I see them held by their father, my sister or their maternal grandparents, but any other devotee I find very hard to take. I find myself looking enviously out of the corner of my eye at one of my sleeping babes or saying rather sharply ‘are you sure he is comfortable like that?’ when I can see him slumbering deeply. An overwhelming sense of possession has possessed me. 

You would think this problem easily solved – I could simply limit the holding time of other people and take the baby onto my lap when it all got too much. But not so with twins. I am near constantly busy with one baby and must let someone else, out of necessity, hold the other. You might then think, given I almost always have one of them on my arm, I would feel I had enough contact with my babies and could relax at seeing the other lie sleeping with some adoring type than sitting unhappily alone in a little baby chair. Twin mothers simply have to accept letting someone else dote on their babies from time to time. 

Despite the rationale, I still cannot help my darting looks and cutting remarks. Perhaps I will get used to handing them over – you may need to give me a few months. So I took two babies to bed today and did not sleep at all but felt much happier for it.

I have a business idea for the entrepreneurial, sartorial type. An elegant line of post-maternity clothes. Almost all new mothers – apart from those who claim to leave the maternity ward in the same pair of jeans they wore on the day of conception – will say the have a wardrobe full of clothes but nothing to wear. Normal clothes too small, maternity clothes too big and nothing in which you can breastfeed discreetly.

A few maternity shops do include a ‘nursing’ line, but the clothes they offer are these strange shaped t-shirts with a big split in the front and invariably ugly. One solution is to wear your partner’s shirts – though usually he needs those. Another is to invest in the odd pretty high-waisted loose dress with buttons down the front. But they are few and far between and trying anything on is impossible when carrying a baby in a sling.

All I can say is thank god it is summer – winter would make these wardrobe challenges harder still. Perhaps it is time I started sewing (in all of those idle moments … ).

Another aspect of motherhood I had not appreciated before the birth of the twins is that I would always see their faces when I close my eyes. EIght weeks in and I have managed at least twice to send them out in the pram with trusted grandparents but without me. But when I lie down in these peaceful moments in a strangely empty flat, their cries echo in my ears as hauntingly as their reddened, contorted faces drift in front of my eyes. In reality they slumber on silently perfectly rosy faced.
The power of my mind is rather magical in a way, leaving me feeling constantly attached. But I wonder when I may daydream of other things again – in another eighteen years perhaps.