Double, double the trouble.
We all know there’s no one in the world quite as busy as a mum.
Except, maybe, a mum of twins, or even the mum of TWO sets of twins.
Yes. You heard right. Two sets.
Allow us to introduce you to Anne Stephens, a mothering machine who gave birth to two sets of twins in two years. (Say it really fast, ten times over, and you’ll probably be about half as frenzied as this woman was three years into parenting.)
Anne is a mother, an English Teacher, a former netball coach, the president of P&C and did all this while taking care, and living with, her elderly mother.
On the latest episode of I Don’t Know How She Does It, Anne talks to Sarah Macdonald about how she managed, and sometimes didn’t manage, four young children under two — and how she manages them now, aged 24 and 22.
So, what was the toughest time?
Ask twin-rookies like us, and we’d probably hedge our bets on the early years. Nappy-changing and energy-demanding toddlers.
Listen to Anne talk about raising her twins here. (Post continues after audio.)
But that’s why we’re the rookies. Because for Anne, it was later.
“As they got older, I couldn’t believe the demands emotionally. It changed completely, and I was like ‘take me back to when I just had to change your nappy and put food in your mouth, instead of me having to be here to listen to every single thing you have to say’,” she told Sarah Macdonald.
But don’t let her fool you into thinking that having four young children under two years old was anything more than a walk in the park. In fact, at times, it was the walks in the park that were the hardest.
“Every time I would attempt to put them in the stroller and attempt to take them to the park or whatever, I could always find seven shoes, not eight. And it would drive me crazy. So eventually, someone would just go barefoot that day.”
