Emma Mahony - Double Trouble - Twins and How to Survive Them

Sadly for twin mothers, the day of maternity-wear reckoning will be reached far earlier than for those carrying singletons. But you can at least comfort yourself in the knowledge that you will get far more wear out of them. Also, lest you forget, you will be wearing those same maternity trousers for a good few weeks (or months in my case) after you have had the babies. The sight of a twin mother’s stomach after the birth is best kept under wraps. It will be a while before the diamond in your pierced tummy button is back out on display.

When it comes to buying maternity wear, go only for the ‘capsule wardrobe’. You remember that 90s’ fashion phase that urged everyone to go out and buy dark-coloured tailored basics to wear with T-shirts for power breakfasts and board meetings? Well, it may have dropped off the agenda for London Fashion Week, but it is still vital to your pregnant sense of wellbeing. There is nothing worse than waking every morning and having a clothes tantrum because you can’t face your multicoloured ‘fun’ top. You need to invest in some dark-coloured basics, even if the only power breakfast on the horizon is with your pussycat.

For your capsule wardrobe, the ‘maternity’ basics are:

Big pants (I suppose thongs are doable under the bump, but all that rubbing is soon going to make you head towards Bridget Jones’s favourite drawer)

Maternity tights (other tights just don’t work)

Maternity drop-down bra (this is for breastfeeding later, but as your boobs will have already gone up a cup size or two, you may as well buy early rather than buy twice)

Maternity jeans (see below)

Maternity stretch trousers (black, don’t be tempted by any fawn or ‘fun’ light colours as they will remain stubbornly in the wardrobe)

Some tops (don’t have to be cut in the maternity bias but may show the unattractive jersey stomach gusset if not)

Two dresses (optional, but dresses are just so much more comfortable by the end, when even the forgiving gusset has a piece of elastic pressing down on your stomach). Dresses, particularly if they are long with long sleeves, need minimum extra layers, which you don’t have in your wardrobe anyway. Plus, with dresses, you can sometimes get away with non-maternity stuff. I wore two Ghost non-maternity dresses right up until my 40th week with the twins, so anything is possible.

Whether you live in the city or the country, by the time you have become so pregnant that you don’t feel like moving, or later on a housebound mother, you are ready to discover the joy of mail order. It is part necessity and part fantasy (impossibly clean babies, no hint of baby sick anywhere, being pushed along by beautiful blonde teenage model mothers, no sign of bags under the eyes). Once you have rung for your first catalogue, you will become an addict. It is a perfectly normal symptom of shopping deprivation brought about by being too large to undress in tiny cubicles. Fortunately for you, your addiction will be fed forever more by new catalogues from different baby-related manufacturers arriving on your doorstep unasked for. You may tut about the paper wastage, but before long you will be hooked, flicking through the pages to see the latest baby gizmos.

The upside to mail-order shopping is that you can do it when you are pinned to the bed breastfeeding two babies, and you can shop online when the children are asleep. The downside is that once the babies are born, you are unlikely ever to find an envelope and Sellotape to return anything that didn’t fit. My twins are still waiting to grow into their cute Breton tops, bought by mistake at size six years instead of six months.

The best maternity-wear and baby shops

Blooming Marvellous

(0870 751 8944: www.bloomingmarvellous.co.uk)

Blooming awful name but it boasts the ‘UK’s largest range of maternity wear’ and has some good classic items for late pregnancy, such as large linen shirts that can also be worn afterwards. It is a one-stop shop for your pregnancy capsule wardrobe with a growing newborn section. Just steer away from Womb Song Kit (£49.99). Your babies will never thank you, and that money would be better spent at the Gucci of pregnancy wear – Formes.

Formes

(0208 689 1133: www.formes.com)

Formes is the French maternity-wear company where all pregnant mothers would shop if they were rich celebrities. That doesn’t mean you cannot treat yourself to one item there. And if you do buy only one thing, make it a pair of jeans. A pair bought by a friend for £75 is on its fourth pregnant mother, and they still look great. Women who work in the City should only buy maternity wear from Formes, because they can.

Jojo Maman Bébé

(0870 241 0560: www.Jojomamanbebe.co.uk)

Also French, and a little more classy than bloomingterrible-name. Its website is well-organized and easy to buy from. Its denim jeans are cheaper than its French rival at around £32.99.

Brora

(0207 736 9944: www.brora.co.uk)

This company makes exquisite cashmere baby clothes: cardigans (£45), trousers (£45) as well as hand-knitted baby bonnets (£23), baby booties (£19) and baby mittens (£15). One friend who was given a gift box of trousers and cardy loved the feel of her cashmere baby so much that every night for three months she would wash out the top and bottoms and hang them on a radiator for the next day. Some may be horrified at the thought of spending so much on baby clothes, so this is one to be given as a gift, if anybody’s asking. Yasmin Le Bon, who discovered Brora for her children, never hands on the clothes but recycles them into cushions. If it’s good enough for Yasmin…

Beaming baby

(0800 034 5672: www.beamingbaby.com)

This is a totally organic website offering mainly toiletries for babies – natural bathcare, talcum powder and kits for mothers. It also sells some unusual hand-finished clothes for babies made from organic cotton – its long-sleeved ‘bodies’, sleepsuits and babygros are an environmentally-friendly alternative to the bigger stores.

Mothercare

(0845 330 4030: www.mothercare.com)

Unless you are reading this after a major relaunch, Mothercare seems to me to have gone off the boil in recent years with some frumpy maternity offerings and often poorly-stocked shops. Shame when you consider that it’s the name everyone gropes for when they need anything baby-wise. One pregnant friend became so exasperated with not being able to find a shop assistant recently that she stood in the middle of the store and announced ‘I am here to spend hundreds of pounds with you, please can anyone help me?’ She spent £800 at the store and had to return to the shop when the goods were delivered because they still had their security tags on.

When I contacted Mothercare about these general issues of stock and customer service, they replied:

‘We acknowledge that our performance in these areas has not lived up to the expectations of our customers. We have a new and revitalized senior management team in place that is concentrating its efforts on returning Mothercare to its position of pre-eminence as the number one retailer for parents.’