There is a certain street camaraderie between twin mothers. I have fallen into conversation and become good friends with at least three other mothers over our twin prams. Walking together and thereby taking up the whole pavement offers a wonderful opportunity to share stories and ask for advice. Best is to know someone with twins a few months older and someone else with twins a few months younger – both a supply of tips and that feeling of being an expert.

One thing all the twin mothers I know have in common is their insistence on a routine. Before our babies were born I pooh poohed the idea of sticking to a very strict routine. It sounded to me like a waste of time and energy trying to force babies to do certain things, such as eat and sleep, when they were simply not in the mood. So we have lived haphazard through these last three and a half months, babies doing what they want, when they want, only a vague eye on the clock as evening approached to introduce the idea of bedtime. But talking to these other twin mothers who seemed so enamoured of their routines, I swallowed my scepticism and began to think there must be something in it.

So, partly out of interest and partly out of a desire for a more predictable life, we introduced our own strict(ish) routine last Saturday. A week later and with two content babies in bed, I must humbly admit that it seems to be working. We all get up at 7am, go out for a walk so the babies can sleep in the pram for an hour at 9am and I can buy a coffee somewhere on the way. The rest of the day involves a lunchtime nap and then a final walk and nap around 4pm. Bedtime starts at 8pm. Pushing the pram around the park in the rain early in the morning makes me feel somewhat like an English governess, but at least we all get plenty of exercise and fresh air …

Who would have thought we would all be such creatures of habit? I shall be advocating this to the latest additions to the twin mum circuit – well, at least until the weather really turns.

We went on our first family holiday last weekend to the coast of the Baltic Sea. Only two nights away and a short three hour drive from home we thought this a safe trial run before we undertake anything more daring. And, having been seduced into buying a pram with all terrain suspension and incline safety belts, we were keen to test its full capability – if the family in the twin brochure could push it on the beach, why couldn’t we?

Lovely as it was to be by the sea, we quickly realised that pushing a twin pram on sand is not easy. Life is not a brochure, it seems. All the while the babies slept soundly, lulled by the sounds of the waves, but a few slow steps later we looked around us to see no other prams on the beach, not even single ones. That was our first lesson in babies and beaches.

When the rain and grey clouds finally broke on the Monday morning of our departure, we learnt our second lesson – babies, sun and sand are an even trickier proposition. Beaches offer little shade, no matter how you position your parasol or strandkorb (for those of you in the know) and even if you do find a small spot you cannot lie your baby on a matt on the sand, unlike in a park, as sand will blow in their little eyes. Half an hour in we packed our bags, again having looked around to see no children as young as ours, to then sit relieved in the cool of the car, steering ourselves homewards.

So that was our adventure. To have our twins lovingly admired by every middle aged lady on the beach was a treat. To be somewhere different was even more wonderful. Our babies returned sandfree and we rather pleased with ourselves, despite the quickfire lesson in parenthood.

Though loving parents, these last two nights we have successfully experienced a wonderful phenomenon called ‘bedtime’. After nights of walking around our flat as gloom gathered outside and the clock ticked around to eleven, or worse, midnight, wakeful babies on our shoulders, we decided to introduce a much earlier bedtime for our twins. We shifted their final feed by a few hours and firmly put then down in their cot. though waiting until they were suitably sleepy of course. And, incredibly enough, it has worked, so far at least. This evening we both ate with two hands (rather than with at least one baby in our arms) and without rocking a small baby chair with our feet. Now we sit on the settee absorbed in our laptop windows to the outside world. Even more exciting is the prospect of our early night still to come – it is the small but significant achievements in life after all.