Seeing double

Published 1:32 pm Monday, January 16, 2012

If you run into this family and you think that you might be seeing double, it’s not your glasses- you are seeing double- maybe even more.

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That’s because there are six sets of twins in David and Miranda Robertson’s combined backgrounds.

Miranda (Baugh) Robertson has two sets of twin aunts, Faye and Kaye Arnold, and Enda and Glenda Arnold. Her mother, Linda Johnson, also had a set of twin girls, Miranda and her twin sister, Amanda.

Miranda and David had twin boys in 2010, and his brother, Joey, had twin girls last fall.

David’s father is also a twin. Miranda’s step-father has a set of twin sisters.

Get them all together and they could start their own twin convention.

You can’t say that Miranda didn’t give David fair warning. On their first date she informed her young suitor that whoever she settled down with and married would have to get used to the fact that she knew in her heart that she would have twins.

David sort of brushed of her prediction.

Fast forward. Six years later they were in the doctor’s office for an ultrasound. They mentioned to the technician that they were going to his parents for dinner, and that they had already broken the news to them that they were expecting.

“Well,” drawled the ultrasound technician, “you’d better figure out a good way to tell them this.” With a twist of the wrist, the screen was turned toward David. There were two babies.

“My heart started racing,” David recalled. “My mouth fell opened, I became light-headed and I slowly backed up and sat down.”

“I got right back up and looked at the screen again just to be sure of what I was seeing,” he laughed. “Miranda wasn’t nearly as surprised as I was. I was just in shock.”

Their babies were born on September 9, 2010. “The first three months were almost unbearable. We probably averaged two hours of sleep per night,” he laughed. “Then, just when we had them sleeping through the night pretty well, the tornado hit and a pecan tree fell on our house. We shuffled around between our parent’s house and an apartment, then back home and it messed up their sleep habits.”

 Miranda’s mother was an invaluable resource for the young parents. Having had twins herself, she could give Miranda lots of welcomed advice. “She stayed with us for the first four weeks,” said Miranda. “She taught me how to feed them both at the same time and lots of other things.”

One day David received a text from his brother, Joey. “You aren’t the only special one to have twins- Crystal and I are expecting twins, too.”

That set of twin girls, Lola and Jocie, made their appearance on September 29, 2011, just after the first birthday of David and Miranda’s boys, Cooper and Carter.

 David’s mother, Susan Richardson, is beside herself, says David. “Christmas of 2009 she had one grandchild (Joey’s and Crystal’s daughter). Christmas of 2010 she had three grandchildren, and this Christmas she had five.”

“Next Christmas we’ll have to have some more help,” he vowed.

Cooper and Carter are now toddlers. “It’s a madhouse,” he said. “They can say ‘no’ but they don’t know what it means yet.”

“My children are wonderful, fabulous and exhausting,” laughed Miranda, who is back at work full-time now. “They are my heart and soul.”

David started a blog when they were pregnant. “I called it, “The Waiting Womb,” he said. “It’s mostly the frequent incoherent musings of a seriously sleep-deprived dad.”

Do you think it could be something in the water?