When Maddie and Maggie were born, we were told by our OBGYN and our perinatologist both said we were going to have fraternal, or dizygotic, twins. They said that because the babies had separate sacs and separate placentas. I was in my late 30s and I have had a history of hyper ovulation, so it seemed logical. Depending on which statistics you read, there is about a 10% of the separate sacs/placentas twins being identical (or monozygotic). But there is not consensus on this. Other experts in the field are now saying it's has high as 30%.
So, when the babies were born. We thought they were fraternal. They did look a little different. When twins checked out of the NICU, we kept their bracelets on. Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would have so much difficulty determining who was who, after all we are their parents. I've grown up with twins and learned to figure it out. Eventually, our pediatrician pointed out to us that Maddie has a crooked toe on the right foot - Yeah! A mark to tell them apart. As you read in our previous post, we finally had them DNA tested.
The key to keeping it all straight has been developing systems and procedures:
- Daycare and their daily report cards - The teachers go nuts trying to figure out who is who, so we dress Maddie in pink or purple and Maggie in blue or green, then write it down on their daily reports at daycare. We use Maddie's crooked toe as a reminder when dressing them.
- Bloodtests, shots, and doctor checkups - got to get this straight for the record! Always check Maddie's toe (never rely on their clothes color because we have been known to mess that up sometimes).
- Drinking from their own bottles - we have a system, red bottles for Maddie and blue bottles for Maggie (with names on the bottles).
- Medicines - give both of them medicines at the same time; provided they both are on the same medications, which doesn't always happen.
- Diaper changes - Who was changed when? Is Maddie's Diaper needing to be changed or is it Maggie's turn? So we just decided to change both diapers at the same time no matter what, even though we hate to waste diapers.
- Asperators/Nose Sprays - We have color coded asperators w/ names and we mark the nose spray bottles w/ their names.
- Pictures - How do you know which one is Maddie and which is Maggie? We try to dress them different but in some cases, we do like to have photos with them dressed the same. In that case, we try to place Maddie on the right and Maggie on the left.
yada yada....Of course someday, the twins will want to dress themselves and exert their independence. Or they will purposely switch their identities to fool their parents and their teachers. Then we will be in trouble. ;-)
