New research has found that nearly 50 per cent of parents are left struggling unsupported. A survey of 1,226 parents by the Twins and Multiple Births Association (Tamba) found that 46 per cent felt that they didn’t receive enough help and information from a health professional when told that they were expecting a multiple birth. Perhaps most disturbing of all, family doctors came out consistently as the least supportive of the health professionals. A quarter of those who responded said family doctors were unhelpful — consistently worse than consultants, midwives and health visitors.

Yet the need for good support services has never been greater because as in-vitro fertilisation and other fertility treatments have become more easily available, so multiple births in the UK have risen. Multiple births are more likely to occur with IVF because two or more embryos are transferred to the mother’s womb.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that there were 9,131 multiple births in 2003 and multiple births have risen by 20 per cent over the past ten years. More and more parents with twins or triplets need support, both during their pregnancy and after the birth. “It is important that health professionals know more about how to deal with it and can provide adequate support, ” says Helen Forbes, the director of Tamba. “We understand that the NHS is under pressure but we think that a lot more needs to be done to help parents.”

Linda Jones, 37, from Staffordshire, will never forget her GP’s less than sympathetic manner when she called him out — rather than visit the surgery — less than a month after her twin girls were born three weeks premature: “I was hardly out of my wheelchair and he said the fresh air would have done them good.”

A typical problem is that the availability of special antenatal classes for multiple-birth parents varies considerably across the UK, so only 30 per cent of parents get the opportunity to attend. In many cases parents don’t even know about the classes. A spokeswoman for the Royal College of Midwives says: “It’s down to the individual hospital trust concerned as to whether or not they run special antenatal classes for parents expecting twins or multiple births.”

Forbes says that she hears about such problems all the time: “Although the figures are shocking, they’re no surprise to us.”

Part of the problem is lack of consistency. Alice Nicholson, from Bury, Lancashire, has two sets of twins; amazingly enough, they both arrived by chance, not by IVF. But she knows only too well how care can differ. She has nothing but praise for the hospital that delivered her first premature set of twins, Daisy and George, and for the standard of aftercare they received. But when she went into labour with her second set of twins, Harriet and Eliza, she was told that the delivery suite at the hospital she knew was closed to admissions and she was forced to go elsewhere.

“I had my first set of twins in a theatre with about 16 people, including a consultant, a registrar and four neonatal staff. I felt safe and reassured,” she says. “But at the second hospital I was in a delivery room, with only one nurse and a student nurse. The first baby was in distress and came out not breathing.

“Two neonatal nurses arrived five minutes before she was born and all of a sudden another four came rushing in. Despite my history, it felt like they weren’t as prepared as they could have been and, from the perspective of a panicking mother having a baby that is born not breathing, I felt it was wrong.”

The lack of help continues long after the birth as well. At a time when mums and dads need extra help coping with two lots of everything, parents of twins are often doubly disadvantaged. For example, because many twins and multiples are born prematurely and need time in specialist care when they are in hospital, they often miss out on the vital midwife support that couples normally get for ten days after they have come home with their baby.

What’s more, parents of twins often lose financially, even though, unlike most parents, they have to buy two of everything.

“Despite popular misconceptions, parents of multiple births aren’t entitled to additional benefits or grants,” says Forbes. “In fact, Tamba believes that the current system actually penalises families with twins or more.” This is because the baby tax element of the Child Tax Credit is payable only once, regardless of how many babies you have in a year — which could amount to families of twins losing out on £545 a year.

Tamba is campaigning to get this changed. With more and more parents facing the challenges of multiple birth, the organisation believes that the need for practical and financial help needs a much higher profile. Twins need to get on to the political agenda.

For further information on the Twins and Multiple Births Association, visit Tamba.org.uk or call the Tamba Twinline on 0800 1380509 from 10am until 1pm, and 7pm until 10pm daily

Page 2: Twin care and Families in need

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Twin care

Catherine Faughey, aged 30, from Nottingham, says that she and her partner had little support from her GP during her pregnancy with twins Maisie and Bridie, now 22 months old. She was referred to the pregnancy assessment centre at her hospital and assured that if she had any worries they’d give her a scan. The reality was vastly different.

“I was admitted to an ordinary ward five weeks before the twins were born, as they weren’t growing well,” says Catherine. “One day my twins were very still and I was worried, so I asked if I could be scanned. The ward sister said no and I was made to feel a nuisance.

“Both before and after the birth, the standard of care varied considerably. The first midwife I spoke to about breast-feeding just laughed, and said: ‘How do you expect to feed two of them?’ I was shocked; you assume the health service would be promoting breast-feeding.” Catherine did breastfeed: “I was feeding every three hours, but with twins, the three hours run into each other and I got no sleep.

“Because they were born at 38 weeks, they were technically only seven to ten days old when we got them home, but we still didn’t get midwife visits or support.”

Families in need

What the Tamba twins survey found