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.