Have you ever considered when serving salad in which hand it is easier to have the fork and in which hand the spoon? This dilemma will only be interesting to you if you eat a lot of salad. The same is true once you have children, though this has nothing to do with forks, spoons or salad (well, not yet). This is about having a point of reference.

Before our two were around, I was never really interested in people’s stories about their children’s developmental achievements. I would smile in an appreciative but unengaged way when told so and so could now hold a little teddy bear or was starting to try and roll over. In truth, I thought, well surely all babies do that some time or other, what’s the fuss.

Now that I spend all day, every day gazing adoringly at my babies, it is almost all I think about and I absolutely love talking about it. I exchange excited updates over the pram with other parents. “It is soooo exciting,” I trill, “Do you know so and so actually grabbed hold of the leg of the bumble bee on the play mat! Amazing!”

I can’t help myself. Having seen these babies start as tiny little worms that have just popped out into the world, blinking at us and wriggling half-heartedly in their dazed newborn way, to now seeing them interact and play and get better at using their hands by the hour, is just incredibly exciting. Every child must go through these stages, but it is that experience of going through each tiny (or huge) step each day that fascinates.

And now I have a point of reference and a level of understanding for any other parent going through, or about to go through, the same thing. In the years to come I will now listen fascinated and thrilled when I hear of each baby’s new ability because, unlike most salads, these things really are miraculous.

Relentless is one word for having twins. Days pass in a blur from feed to feed, nap to nap, walk to walk, at least one baby almost always on the arm – interspersed with the usual pleasures of course, such as a baby smiling charmingly at you or squealing with pleasure as I blow a raspberry on his or her tummy. Those quiet, rare times when both babies sleep are either when strolling round the park or doing something useful at home. I reach the end of the day without a moment ‘for myself’.

That is until we perfected our bedtime routine. Now, we find ourselves hands empty, flat quiet at 8.30pm. This sudden arrival of spare time initially left me feeling disconcerted. Surely there was something I should be doing, I thought whilst wandering aimlessly from room to room, or at least one baby about to wake up and need to be rocked for a while. But no, on they sleep, and we have done everything we need to do to make the following day run smoothly. Twiddling my thumbs, I realise I no longer know what to do with myself.

The possibilities line up – read a book, check emails, have a bath, simply sit on the settee … So tonight I painted my toenails and read an article in the New Statesmen. That idea for my first novel can wait until tomorrow, depending on the success of bedtime.

Aside from the odd bold dress and sparky history essay, I have never considered myself to be particularly provocative. Little did I expect that my time to shock would start in motherhood.

The first was pushing our almost newborn babies around in the pram. Passersby peered in, as they do with twins, and exclaimed with astonishment how small our babies were. At first we wondered if this was because our babies were indeed relatively small, but having subsequently compared birth weights with other babies we realised they were really not so small to merit such surprise. Then. as our babies grew and received fewer gawping mouths, we began to look around at other babies in prams and recognised that no other parent seemed to be taking such a new baby for a walk. They were all a few months in, these sturdy looking little things. We had been the only people to venture out with two week old babies – that was the difference.

Next came those dastardly daring trips outside without hats. The sun was shining for much of the summer and every now and again, one of our babies ended up being carried in a sling without a hat. We hugged the shade as much as we could, but for fleeting moments at five o’clock in the afternoon their little heads saw the sunlight (our protective hand still shielding their eyes). The admonishing looks we got from passing mothers for that … Now, I am aware that little babies should be kept out of the sun. Who would want their beautiful new skin to run the slightest risk of sunburn. But here it appears that even a few seconds is beyond the pale. So I shocked again and must look harder, it seems, for a tiny parasol attachment for our slings or run the risk of becoming a social outcast.

The most recent incident was at a mums and babies group. There we were sitting around merrily chatting, babies in the middle on towels and prams stationed at the other side of the room, when one of my babies produced a little bit of milky sick. I sighed, realising that the cloth I usually use to wipe up such things was far away on the other side of the room and sitting holding one whingy baby, as I was, would make it hard to reach. I then saw that one of my other baby’s socks had fallen off and had a flash of inspiration that I could use that instead. As I reached towards the very clean sock, baby balanced on my knee, another (always impeccably organised) mother saw what I was up to and darted horrified to the nearest set of paper towels. ‘You can’t use that’, she exclaimed, ‘don’t you have a cloth?!’

Perhaps we must invest in more baby paraphernalia or I should always have a muslin cloth tucked fashionably into my back pocket. Perhaps I should have responded with the fact that having twins makes you ever so slightly carefree when it comes to what you use to wipe up a tiny bit of baby sick. Either way, I prefer our adventurous attitude to having babies.