Looking Back on Raising Twins

By Alma Phillipson

Times were a lot different back in Dowagiac, Michigan in 1962 when I became pregnant with twins, a boy and a girl. There were no ultrasounds in those days, so I didn't find out I was having twins until my eighth month of pregnancy! The doctor had his suspicions because I was so huge. I could eat just by setting my plate on top of my tummy! So the doctor finally decided to do an x-ray. I still remember him coming to the house afterward and telling me to sit down. (Doctors still made house calls in those days.) He drew a little picture and showed me, "Now here's the first baby, and here's the second baby . . ." And that is how I found out that we were having twins!

The doctor would show up at the house every other day to manually turn the twins around in my tummy, which made me more comfortable. At one point, we thought I might go into labor so I was hospitalized overnight, but everything worked out okay, and I was sent back home. I gave birth to the twins right around my due date, and Carol weighed six pounds, seven ounces, and Chuck was born first at six pounds, thirteen ounces. They were both able to head home with me from the hospital.

This was joyous news, although I still had one son, David, in diapers, as well as two boys, Irv and Jerry, in elementary school, so I knew I'd have my hands full! It turns out I was right. Fortunately, I'm the kind of person who doesn't need a lot of sleep because I was very busy for a while. My mother lived in Florida and I lived in Michigan, so I didn't have her to help out, although she did sign me up for diaper service. I also had a helper for two half-days a week, as well as any assistance that my husband and two older children could provide. Still, it could be overwhelming at times.

I soon found out that I didn't need a lot of the stuff that I thought I was going to need. For instance, even though I had two bassinets, I put them away within a week and just put the twins down together in one crib. They stayed that way until they got too big and each had their own crib.

Feeding time was always a lot of fun. People often asked me which baby got fed first, and I would say, "The one who makes the most noise!" More often than not, it was Chuckie. Both babies were bottle-fed, since that's what we usually did in those days, and it wasn't as easy to mix up a batch of formula as it is now. I did have a bottle feeder, so one baby could use that while I picked up the other one for burping. That way, both babies got some holding during feeding time. When they started baby food, I tried to keep all their silverware separate, but it didn't take long before I realized that sharing the same spoon was a lot easier and wouldn't kill them!

Getting around with so many children was also more of a challenge in those days. There were no minivans, so our family of seven squeezed into our station wagon. I carried the twins around in a big basket when they were small (no hand carriers), and then I used a harness on them when they started running around. Yes, sometimes people made comments like, "They're not dogs!" but with three little ones underfoot, my primary concern was just keeping them safe and preventing them from darting out into the road. When I was out with all of the children, I would put Jerry in charge of Chuckie, David was inseparable with Irvie, and I would take charge of my daughter.

We had baby gates all over the house, and I cleaned out a low cupboard in the kitchen and filled it with items that the babies could play with. I never had to install safety locks on the other cupboards because they learned that they had their own cupboard and were content with that.

At first, the three youngest children shared a room. We had the twins in their cribs and Dave in a rollaway bed. The two older boys were in another bedroom. However, when the twins turned two, we moved into a bigger house. My daughter got her own room, and the two older boys were together in one, and the two younger boys in the other.

My husband, Irv, owned a men's clothing store in town, and would often come home for lunch (often on foot) and take a ten-minute nap. He'd fall fast asleep on the couch, and never seemed to notice that the three little kids were crawling all over him!

During those early years, Dr. Spock's book was my bible. He came out with a later edition after the twins were born that had a section about twins, so I consulted that often. That was the only thing I had. There were no books, magazines, or TV shows about raising twins back then. There were no multiples groups so I could talk with other parents of twins. We knew one other family (The Cripes) that also had twins, about the same age as ours. Our kids became friends, and I would talk to their mother occasionally.

When it came time to start school, it was school policy to separate twins, but the school made an exception for us since one twin would have had to go in the mornings and the other in the afternoons. (That's how kindergarten was back then; they had a morning and an afternoon session.) So, they let both twins attend morning kindergarten, and then they separated them for first grade, which is how they remained for the rest of their school years. The twins did very well with that, and didn't seem to mind being in separate classrooms.

In those years, nobody really went out to dinner very much as it was too expensive. That was usually reserved for special occasions, like Mother's Day. Nevertheless, my husband insisted that I join a bowling league so that I'd get out of the house once a week. An older couple (Edith and Leo Rasmussen) bowled with us. She would go bowling with me in the afternoon, and he would bowl with my husband in the evenings. She would help me get the kids to bed, and then the adults would play bridge and socialize. That was our big entertainment for the week. We were also friends with several other couples who got married around the same time we did, and we would all go over to each other's houses with our kids.

Things didn't slow down when the twins entered their teenage years. They were both involved in sports (Carol Ann even played softball one year), so we would often have to go to half a game, and then run over to watch the end of another game.

It was a lot safer in those days for the kids to wander about town alone, but I still worried about them. When they wanted to walk downtown, I would tell a little white lie and say that I didn't have any money so they would have to stop by my husband's store to get some. My husband would call me after they left the store to let me know they were okay, which always made me feel better.

As teenagers, the kids all had jobs in the store. My husband always treated them like any other employee and was very strict with them. He thought it was important to set a good example for the other employees. The kids were told that if they didn't show up for work, they'd be fired like anyone else. Their first task was to sort the hangers into different colors, for which they received one cent a hanger. When they "mastered" that task, they would move on to more difficult ones.

Soon, it was time for college, and those were very lean years. At one point, we had three children in college at the same time. Fortunately, the kids all held jobs while they went to school and helped out with the expenses.

All five children are grown now and I'm a grandmother and great-grandmother, but I look fondly back on those years of raising a big family, and being the mother of twins!

Alma and Irv Phillipson now live in Naples, Florida. Chuck and his family live in the Detroit suburbs, and Carol lives in Naples. Their oldest still lives in Dowagiac, and the other two boys live in San Diego and Australia. Alma has five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. At 82 years old, she works in a nursing home, still looking after others.