One Plus One Equals - I Don't Know - Two and a Quarter?

One question I get asked occasionally is whether I think raising twins is twice as much work as raising a single baby, or more than twice as much, or less than twice as much. It's kind of a tough question. For one thing, I don't really feel qualified to answer because I've never raised a single baby. And for another thing, I worry a little about sounding arrogant and belittling the plight of the single-baby parents, given how difficult it is to raise even one baby. Who am I to say that our lives are so much more difficult than someone with just one baby?

Aw, what the heck. I'll say it. It's much more difficult. So there. Sue me.

Maybe it's not three times as much work, but I think it's slightly more than twice as much work. Let's say 2.2 times as much?

Now why do I think raising twins is more than twice as much work as raising one baby? Well, here's the way I think of it:

Parents have an internal battery that can be drained or can be recharged. A fussy or crying baby drains the battery. A happy, calm, or sleeping baby recharges the battery. For someone with just one baby, there are usually enough happy, calm, or sleeping periods to keep the battery at least partially charged most of the time.

The problem with raising twins is that if only one baby is happy, that still drains your battery, because that means that the other baby is fussy or crying, and darn it, that's still draining. You only recharge your battery if both babies are happy at the same time, and my experience so far is that this really doesn't happen all that often. And if, God forbid, both of the babies are screaming their head off at the same time, well that just instantly drains the battery to zero. Trust me on that one.

So, because you rarely get to recharge your battery, your battery just keeps draining and draining as the day goes on, and by the time (to pick a random example) your husband comes home after work, you're almost totally spent. You're like the Energizer Bunny, except someone switched out the Energizer batteries with those generic store-brand batteries that they just fished out of the trash because they can't find any other batteries around the house.

Okay, did I beat that metaphor to death enough for you? I thought so.

Where was I going with this anyway? I can't remember -- my battery's too low.

And now, a picture before I say goodnight -- a picture that I think illustrates the difficulties in getting both babies to be happy at the same time: