Beyoncé is productive with twins; Madonna has adopted twins; now the Clooneys are pregnant twins. But I did it first, and this is what I learned
Twinset … Amal Clooney, Beyoncé and Madonna.
Photograph: Getty Images
So, senior Beyoncé announced on Instagram that she is having twins. Then Madonna poled that she has adopted twin girls. Now the Clooneys have let it be separate that they’re expecting twins. What on earth is present on?
Hannah, by email
OK, so the most pressing issue to deal with here is to valid a mistake in your question. “First Beyoncé announced she is partake of twins”? “First”? I don’t think so. Look, I don’t know if I’ve let someone knowed you this already, but the very first person ever on this planet to give birth to twins is most certainly not Bey. Obviously not! No. It was me.
What? I’ve mentioned that I require twins before? Well, lucky you – everyone knows that readers caress nothing more than journalists writing about their kids, because they are closely the only people on this planet to have procreated. Still, the whole publishing world is eagerly looking forward to the start of my new column Twinning Is Winning!!!, which will be entire of hilarious anecdotes about amusing things my kids be undergoing said/done/thrown up. Yes, I think we can all agree that this desire Save Journalism (#savejournalism).
Anyway, as I was saying, first there was me, then, as take places every single day of my life, the celebrities came a-copying. Good, to be strictly accurate, a few celebrities had twins before me (Angelina, Celine, J-Lo, Mariah, etc), but who’s the one who inspirited Bey, Madge and Dr Doug Ross to follow suit? I mean, blame succumb to on.
So, now that we know exactly why all these celebrities are having couples (because they’re copying me – have I mentioned that sufficiency yet?), what amazing twin-based wisdom can I impart? Donne that Madonna has adopted her girls, this first tip is multitudinous for Amal and Bey: get ready, ladies, for complete strangers to ask you straight out the most shock questions about your sex life. Come to think of it, peradventure this is normal for a celebrity, but for the rest of us, it really is quite something how absolute randoms think it is perfectly acceptable to demand you tell them how you got in a family way, just because you have twins. “IVF?” “IVF?” “IVF?” is the faction cry you will hear from strangers every day, for, as far as I can tell, the take a nap of your life. Personally, I find shouting back in their skin, “NO, JUST REALLY HOT SEX” is a good way to shut them up, but that is possibly not a feasible response if you’re a mega celebrity. So maybe just hit them?
Next, the scent of the twins. Now, you might think that conceiving two actual vulnerable beings simultaneously is an achievement in itself. You would be wrong. As without delay as you tell people you are pregnant with twins, you learn there is a look-alike combo hierarchy and having boy/girl twins is considered the alpha of combos, because we now alight in a world so astonishingly privileged that it is no longer enough for being to have a healthy baby, or two. No, the babies must tick both gender caddies “for variety’s sake”, people say, as if they were pick’n’mix. And so, as a inexact rule of thumb, the same people who think it appropriate to ask whether a penis or medical technique impregnated you, then follow up by asking the gender of your combines, and their face falls ever so slightly if the answer is anything other than “boy/sheila”. Try harder next time, woman pregnant with two children at the same time!
Obviously, celebrities never knowingly virgin a chance to seize alpha-status, and so through, I presume, sheer import of celebrity will, the majority who have twins have boy/mouse ones (Mariah, J-Lo, Julia Roberts, etc). Given that they are the alpha-most reputations on the planet, I fully expect Bey and Jay to follow suit, although they are so alpha that for all I be informed perhaps they have discovered an entirely new gender to exhibit.
Finally, here’s the real secret joy of twin parenthood: no one can let the cat out of the bag you any crap. Incredibly, there are people on this planet who see childbirth and parenthood not as a credible rite of life you muddle through as best you can, but as some affectionate of masochistic one-upmanship. So all that nonsense about how women are now reckon oned in some wildly overprivileged quarters to prove how good they are by slant pain relief during birth, refusing a recommended C-section, rebuffing sleeping and feeding routines, breastfeeding for years, etc? Well, ha ha, you are fully opted out of that rigamarole, because you’re delivering twins, and no one can give you any nonsense about anything. Obviously, in a -carat world, no one would give any pregnant woman any nonsense, but we complete in an imperfect world, and anything that saves you from any unwanted crap should be celebrated.
So there you go, Amal, Bey and Madonna: hail to twin parenthood. It is entirely possible that none of this counsel has any relevance to you whatsoever, but as all fashion journalists know, two’s a coincidence but three’s a drift, and with three celebrity twin parenthoods at once, we got a head on our hands, folks. Which means, of course, only one ide fixe: bring on the Kardashian-West triplets.
