Parents of twins are constantly bombarded with comments from strangers. One that Mr. Hutch and I get fairly often is, "Hey, two for the price of one!". I used to respond to this comment the same as any other: with a smile, maybe a polite laugh or a lighthearted reply. Secretly though, I would seethe. And the last time someone said it to me, I gave a different reply. I said, "no actually, it's two for the price of two". Because it is. At least two, emotionally maybe even closer to three is what I was thinking.
Having two babies at once is not the same thing as having two babies consecutively. I don't care if your kids are nine and a half months apart. It's not "basically" the same as twins. Nope. No way. There are a lot of reasons why this is true, and the financial aspect is not insignificant. At first blush, it might not seem that having two children at once would have much more financial impact than having two a year or more apart. But I want to run some numbers.
First off, the Hutchlings were born very premature. I had them at 29 weeks and 5 days, and even then only by the skin of my teeth. Apparently I was very close to having them at just over 27 weeks, though I didn't know that until well after they were born. V spent 56 days in the NICU, N spent 68. Luckily I live in a socially progressive country with universal healthcare so there was no tab to be paid upon their discharge. Had they been born elsewhere (looks southward) that would have been one hefty bill. My very quick research led me to a figure of $3000 per day for the average NICU stay for a premature infant, or a total cost of about $400,000 for infants born at 28 weeks, not including surgeries. At $3000 per day, that would be $168,000 for V and $204,000 for N. Quite likely more as their stay was not "average". They spent a good portion of their stay in the level 3 NICU (requiring the most care and money), before progressing through level 2 and then level 1 (least care and money). Plus N had one surgery so who knows what that cost. I honestly don't know how insurance systems work in places without universal healthcare so I don't know what portion of that (if any) would have to be paid by the parents. Regardless, any portion of that would have to be significant. So far though, we're at $0, on par with any other parent in this country.
Secondly, there are all kinds of things that we needed two of. When you have kids one at a time, you can save a lot of stuff from the first to use for the second. Not us. Now, we certainly don't believe in having two of everything and we try to get by with the minimum. Some things are unavoidable however. We have a double stroller ($800), two cribs ($140 each), double the cloth diapers ($300 for 12, we have 24), two rear-facing car seats ($230 each) and two front-facing car seats ($72 each), two highchairs ($40 each), two portable playpens for when we visit the nanas (the cheapest one was $40, I think). I think it's safe to say that we spent over a thousand dollars more than we would have for only one.
Next is the daycare. As I mentioned, we spend around $16,000 a year on daycare for both Hutchlings. Yes, parents of two children born apart still have to pay for daycare for each child, albeit staggered. On paper it looks the same. But parents who have their second child before their first has gone to school get a break on daycare, assuming they take a year of maternity leave for their second (as would have been the case for me) and they don't send their eldest child to daycare for that year. We can assume then that pulling one kid out of daycare while on maternity leave with the other saves $8000. This is a tricky one though, as whether that is a benefit or not depends on what mama is bringing home while on maternity leave. I have a relatively generous benefit package in this regard and so brought home about 78% of my salary in my year of maternity leave. That translated to about $12,000 less than a year in which I was working. So for me, taking only one year of maternity leave for two children actually looks like a financial benefit, to the tune of $4000. My situation is more complicated than that, though. I qualified for some extra maternity leave benefits for the period that the Hutchlings were in hospital. This extra leave paid about $5500 less than an equivalent period of salary. So the fact that I had two, and that having two was probably the reason why I had them ten weeks early, means any financial benefit I got by essentially serving my maternity leaves concurrently rather than consecutively evaporated, and then some ($1500 some).
One theme that I imagine will run through the Hutchlings upbringing is that they will always need roughly the same things at roughly the same time. Summer camps, sports fees, University. On paper it's no different than two kids needing those same things a few years apart, but somehow the financial hit just feels harder when you have to pay twice as much at one time.Of course there are some savings that go with having twins. In fact, I got two-for-one at a playgroup I brought them to this week. I saved nine bucks!
All in all, I think it's safe to say that having twins is more expensive than having two kids separately. But I never have to give birth ever again, and in my book, that's priceless.
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