Double Time: How I Survived---and Mostly Thrived---Through the First Three Years of Mothering Twins

by Jane Roper

What do you do when you find out you’re pregnant – times two?!

When Jane Roper found out she was pregnant with twins, she searched high and low for a memoir of the first years with multiples, but came up empty-handed. Four years later, she wrote the book she wished she’d had as a new mother of twins.
Double Time is an entertaining, up-close and very personal look at Jane Roper's first three years raising twin daughters.

From trying to get pregnant to processing the idea of twins, from round the clock feedings and diaper changes to the joy of watching “twinteractions” between her girls as their (very different!) personalities emerge, Jane tells all. Meanwhile, she struggles to keep a history of depression under control—and find answers when her symptoms get worse. All this while falling steadily in love with her duo as they grow from sleepy newborns to mischievous toddlers with a penchant for potty talk.

Full of warmth, honesty, occasional advice, and more than a little humor, Double Time is a smart and engaging account of the first three years with multiples, as well as a refreshingly candid and vulnerable look at parenting, clinical depression, and the quest for work-family balance. It’s Jane Roper’s story, but it’s one that will resonate with countless women—especially those parenting in double time.

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography Memoir, Biography, Humor

272 pages, Hardcover

First published April 18, 2011

About the author

Jane Roper is the author of two novels, The Society of Shame and Eden Lake, and a memoir, Double Time: How I Surived—and Mostly Thrived—Through the First Three Years of Mothering Twints.

Jane’s writing has appeared in Salon, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Millions, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, Cognoscenti, Writers’ Digest and elsewhere, and has been included in the anthology Labor Day: True Birth Stories by today’s Best Women Writers.

A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Williams College, Jane is married to singer/songwriter Alastair Moock. They live with their teenage twins just north of Boston in a drafty Victorian house on a hill. When she is not working, writing, parenting, cooking, hiking, rock climbing or wasting time on social media, Jane can be found trying to read and promptly falling asleep.

Reviews

[Candace Petersen Martineau · Rating 2 out of 5]

The stated purpose of this book was to give future mothers of twins a look into life with twins. I recently found out that I am pregnant with twins and so was looking forward to reading this book. It was an easy read time-wise, but painful to slog through thinking this might be my future. Luckily, I am not dealing with a mental illness and twins, but all in all the book was depressing and made me dread the first three years with my future babies. Not what I was looking for.
If you are having twins, please skip this one unless you are also plagued by depression or bipolar disorder.

[Kirstin · Rating 5 out of 5]

If there ever was a book that described the last two and a half--almost three--years of my life, this is it. Truly. I want to hand this book to everyone I know and say "See? It's not just me! This stuff is HARD!" Breastfeeding twins. Managing outings with baby twins. Twin toddler emotions. Hard choices about career and motherhood. Postpartum twin body. Postpartum hormones and depression. Handling people's comments. Thank you for writing this, Jane Roper.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

It wasn’t quite what I had hoped it would be. I did start out feeling very understood in my feelings after finding out we’re having twins. And, Jane Roper’s writing was easy to read and had some humor sprinkled in. However, I felt like she wrote more about her journey with depression and her career than she did about actually mothering twins. It was less helpful and more heavy than I expected.

[Leslie Wilkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a long-time reader and fan of this author's writing on her blogs, I knew to expect poignant, relatable, hilarious accounts of parenting not one fiesty daughter, but TWO. I was not disappointed. But I did not expect the other focus of this book: a frighteningly fascinating and beautifully raw (not gritty, just honest) first-person depiction of what it's like to battle a mental illness. A good read.

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this on Mother's Day morning while my husband wrangled the twin 4 year old boys downstairs. It was a great way to spend Mother's Day - some hysterically funny moments and a great balanced description of the heaven and hell (sometimes both at the same time) that is parenting twins! If you know someone who is expecting twins, this would be an awesome gift!

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been reading Jane's blog for YEARS. Really, years. My daughter is nine months younger than her girls, and reading her blog has given me a weird kind of second sight. I laughed at the potty training exploits and absorbed the posts about her kids' morbid curiosity about death, all while taking mental notes, knowing that I'd be next.

It's kind of hard for me to rate this book objectively. I feel like I know this family - and I feel like I know a lot of what she is writing about, because I've been reading these stories in her words for a while. I was worried that maybe there wouldn't be enough "new" in the book to keep me (and other long-time blog readers) interested. I was very relieved to find out, that at least for me, that wasn't the case.

Reading this book as a narrative with a chronological story is completely different than reading it in chunks every couple of days. The distance of perspective, and being able to look back and impose a structure and a pattern on the events of Elsa's & Clio's baby- and toddlerhood gave the whole story a path and trajectory. It's the difference between when you are remembering something from a distance, rather than the immediacy telling someone a story from that morning over an evening phone call.

The reason I've been such an avid reader (and commenter) on the Baby Squared blog is that I totally respect Jane's honesty, and that is something that the book gets just right as well. Whether she's talking about how hard parenting is, the weirdness of raising twins in a culture that has a lot of strange (and conflicting) expectations, or the truth of trying to parent and live with a major depressive episode, I found myself nodding, cringing, sighing, and smiling along. It was also nice to get to meet "Mr. Baby Squared" a little bit more. So many "parenting" books gloss over marriage stuff - seeing a wife and husband as a couple, a team, and relationship was wonderful.

I read this book at the same time I was reading
Bloom: Finding Beauty in the Unexpected, which was a little weird. They are both memoirs by mothers, focusing on parenting their daughters, and dealing with challenges - Jane with her depression and bipolar II diagnoses, Kelle with her daughter Nella's Down Syndrom diagnosis. They are both mothers who blog, whose blogs I am a long-term reader of. While that makes it seem like these books are practically the same - they really are nothing alike. As any mom will tell you, no matter how much we're pigeonholed as artists or writers as "mommybloggers" or "momoirists" - every mom is a woman and person too, and while there are similarities, there are differences, too. The only reason I mentioned it at all is that it was just kinda weird, kinda funny.

I would recommend this book to any parent who struggles with vocation/parenting balance - hearing from a mom who likes her work, has her own personal work (writing) is not a voice we get to hear a lot. I would recommend this book to parents of twins, or people close to twins. Particularly good points are that the girls are siblings, not clones (my words) and if you look at any siblings there are going to be ways that they are alike, and that they are different. I can also think of a few of my friends who do not have kids, but do have depression, who might like this book, especially the tone. Jane's slightly snarky, slightly self-critical tone is pitch-perfect throughout, and made me grin wryly in a lot of spots.

Oh! One more reason that this is a timely read for me - my sister is due with twin girls in two and a half months. I got her a copy too.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book tells the story of Jane Roper and her first three years of raising her twin daughters.

I am not a parent, but I loved reading about these girls. It was great reading about how they acted as babies and how their personalities developed as they became toddlers. I was interested in how the author handled raising her girls. It sounded exhausting! I was glad that the author was so honest about how hard it was.

I really appreciated that the author also chose to speak about her struggle with depression while raising her girls. I know several people who are embarrassed about their mental health issues and try to hide them instead of seeking help. In fact, one wonderful mother that I know just revealed to me her horrible struggle with postpartum depression...I had no idea. I am glad that the author described what she went through. I hope that others will be inspired by her and get the help and support they need too.

For me the only real downside to the book was that it did jump back and forth to different times(ages) and it could be a bit hard to follow because of that. I read that some other reviewers didn't like the swearing in this book, but that was not an issue for me. Quite frankly, I would be swearing a lot in some of the situations the author went through.

Overall, I thought this was an interesting and entertaining book about raising twins. I appreciated the author's honesty and candor about motherhood and her depression.

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads. Thank you!

[Nancy Thaler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a son who is a month younger than Jane's girls, and I have been reading her Babble blog since she began.

I had a slight fear that this would be a "blog to book" deal, with little new content. However, the entire memoir was a complete re-telling of Jane's journey, and I genuinely appreciated that she was looking back and "re-viewing" the experiences she'd already written about.

She chose to tell the story linearly, and I found myself in a few places wishing she had grouped her anecdotes by topic (ex.: "Grocery Shopping with Twins" or "Being a Working Mom with Twins" or "Depression and Parenting"). However, there were other times when it felt natural that she started with the ultrasound and ended with their third birthdays.

I find her to be an engaging voice, and honestly: Bring on the swear words! :-)

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jane is a writer, blogger and mother of dragons (oops, I mean twins). She writes about the joys, the struggles, the depression, the successes and the ways in which twin mothering is different than singleton mothering. The things people say, the constant comments about if they are fraternal or identical or the people who say “oh poor you” as if having twins is a negative thing. My father is an identical twin and is very close with his brother so this book was especially interesting for me.

I have to give her props for doing the combo (paid work and motherhood). In my case, I owned my own business so I was able to control my hours and not do physical work any time I wanted, which in theory made that part of motherhood easier but then again…maybe my husband saw that as a reason to give me all the care tasks at home which upped my “work load” so to speak. My husband is the “breadwinner” and so it was nice to read about Jane’s point of view seeing the stress of the role of the “breadwinner” from a females perspective. I think that stress on anyone to be mainly responsible for the families bills makes them feel trapped.

Having dealt with depression myself, my thoughts on the subject are this: In this world of applauded and encouraged non-stop production and divided beliefs, how on earth wouldn’t you get depressed? If 1/4 of adults (more women than men) are on anti depressants just to deal with the world we are in (and the number is only rising), might it be time for us to agree that what we are doing as a society isn’t working? Just my thoughts on the matter.

As a mother of two young girls, I have seen that there is way too much care work being placed on the woman and causing both working from the office and working from home mothers to go crazy. Some ideas to remedy this includes-

Option 1: If there are 2 parents- both work 3 -8 hour days a week which includes affordable medical. In the past there was 1 main parent worker (usually the man) and the other parent stayed home (usually the woman). Lets do the math. That is 5 days a week total work. Then, 50 years ago, women entered the work force but the amount of days everyone worked remained the same. Now we have 10 days of work per week so we have DOUBLED our workload for the week. If everyone worked only 3 days that would be a total of 6 days per week, which is still MORE than the original 5. Let me say that again. Still MORE. But now, both people will have time to take care of themselves and to be more available to parent their kids.

Option 2: Society needs to find a way to de-gender and/or scale down the tasks they are asking of parents such as bringing cookies to school/oranges to sporting events, kids birthdays/party gifts. All of this clearly adds up to time taken away from your own self care even if you say “but I want to do it.” We all want to do everything but just isn’t possible or healthy and just makes us feel like we are letting people down. Maybe we can start with schools and extended families. Who do the schools see responding to bring treats for the teachers or volunteer at your child’s school? Can’t schools just ask for one chunk of donation money in the beginning of the year? Why are parents still allowing gifts to be brought to birthday parties for anyone under 7 and who came up with the annoying idea of goodie bags after the party is over? We know who is really at the store buying those gifts plus these throwaway gifts are ruining the environment. But I digress…

Option 3: if there are two parents, both partners do half of these tasks without being reminded so that one doesn’t feel obligated or pressured by society to do them. This includes but is not limited to play date set-ups, holiday preparation, clothes shopping, packing for trips and overnights, cooking meals, taking kids to doctors appointments, doing laundry.(basically just Read Eve’s book Fair Play)

Option 4: add them all together.

When I had young kids, it was too much work to leave the house and when I did, they would catch a cold from being in a germ filled kids play area. Then I spent the next week dealing with a sick child. I live in the city and every parent I knew was working a job outside of the home, so many weren’t available to hangout and those who did were checking their phones and didn’t seem very present. The automobile and airplane was invented and so we live far away from our families and support network. Aye…it’s a recipe for depression.

I’ve gone way off track here with this review but let me just say, I can see how Jane could be triggered by stress. Thanks for the book Jane, clearly it had an impact on me!

[Emmalene Umar · Rating 1 out of 5]

My biggest complaint about this book is the fact that it feels like a giant advertisement for anti-depressants.

The author’s attitude is that medication solves the purely chemical problem of depression. I massively disagree with that notion, I am not against the use of drugs, but to use drugs without other forms of therapy for years and years on end is not really an ideal plan to promote to others.

I do think it’s great when mum’s are brave and vulnerable and share their story, but I also think that the author’s perceptions are a bit flawed. She often makes it sound like she has it harder than everyone else and there is a lot of comparing going on. I really don’t like all her smugness when she talks about getting her kids to sleep through or potty train before other friends with one child, that competitive stuff goes against building connections.

There’s also some seen where an old lady sits down and talks to her outside a museum and the author says she kept asking her questions and found her annoying. I think the poor lady thought she was keeping her company and making conversation, it’s not like Jane said, “I actually need....” space, privacy, you to entertain my second child for me while I feed. I thought it was sad that the two women had two completely opposite ends of the stick.

So like other readers I definitely wanted the book to end, but just felt I had to get through it, I guess the message and the stories felt fairly monotonous. I was waiting for an epiphany that never really came. (Quitting the part-time job to freelance, was not the big picture epiphany I was expecting). So yeah wouldn’t recommend to others.

[M · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was drawn to this memoir as I am currently pregnant with twins. However, I feel like the title and description of this book are a bit misleading. There are definitely honest portrayals of what it’s like to raise twins and insights that I hadn’t encountered in the less personal twin books I’ve read so far. However, I can’t help thinking/hoping the author’s experiences were significantly overshadowed by her struggle with mental health issues in such a way that won’t relate to my future experiences raising twins. It was definitely interesting to read about her struggles to adjust her medication and work/life balance while experiencing the sometimes adorable and oftentimes difficult aspects of raising twins. However, I hope that I don’t later find her situation far more relatable than I currently imagine.

[Katjusa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the most calming book to read when you're pregnant for the first time and 34 weeks pregnant with twins. The first couple of chapters were plain and not very engaging, but overall I liked it more as the author picked up pace and dug into thorny issues like balancing children and work and the challenges of recalibrating the goals of her pre-motherhood existence. I also felt ushered into the "tribe" of twin parenthood, which was equally terrifying and reassuring. Another reviewer's complaint about a handful of "curse words" is absurd to me ... this was a pretty squeaky clean PG-13 memoir by my standards — in fact, not gritty or R-rated enough! — but hey, we all have different standards.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt like I wrote some of this book -- the difficulties getting pregnant and anxiety disorder, not the having two kids and having bipolar thing. I really liked this one but it simultaneously made me very overwhelmed.

[Nole4Life · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. I made through 80 pages and had to stop. I found this book depressing and am stressing out more than I was. The author makes it seem like the beginning and early months of having twins is miserable. I’m sure she is accurate in many ways but throw in the positive things too.

[Kristy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining and very personal

This book is a memoir. While it does contain some relevant information for twin mom's, it is by no means a how-to guide for twin parents.

[Jessie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny and heartfelt. An enjoyable and easy read about one couple's adventure through the first three years of parenting twins. I particularly appreciated Roper's transparency about her depression.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I won this book in a Good Reads giveaway. It was my first win and I was absolutely thrilled when it came in the mail. It took me a while to actually sit down and read it, but when I did I was laughing and smiling through out most of the book. I didn't even think to take notes until I was mostly done with the book, but I'll try to piece together what I can remember from the beginning.

The beginning of the book was fantastic, I was right along with her on her issues with fertility and doubts about even wanting twins after finding out that you're having them. It was very easy to connect with Roper and feel for her. I loved her issues with the doctors trying to dissuade her from going with "natural" (lol, not vaginal) birth and the hilarious bits about her problems with the pump bra and coworkers, etc.

I'll agree with most the other people who left reviews that she did seem to get a bit whiny and annoying in some places. I kept wondering throughout the middle chunk of the book where the structure was, it seemed very all over the place (which I'm sure my review will too, but I don't get paid to write so deal with it lol).

A few of the other things that irked me about the book were:
1) she completely overreacts about the stigma against people with depression or bipolar disorder. It might have something to do with her delusional guilt, but I have never known anyone to treat people with bipolar disorder as if they're "unstable" or with kid gloves, you know? I feel as though a large portion of people understand that's it's a neurological issue that can be fixed with medication, therapy, etc.
2) she seems to repeat herself A LOT. The repetitiveness gets to be a pain in the ass because I feel like I'm reading the same story over and over again for 200+ pages.
3) I really wish she would have included some pictures throughout the story! Even little black and whites would have been nice to help guide the mental images.

A few things that I loved:
1) her detailed journey of parenting twins while battling with depression/bipolar. I feel like this was the important theme of the book, not how to deal with raising twins. I sort of wished there'd be more of an emphasis on this aspect of the book.
2) I absolutely LOVED her name for the "twin yang", it is completely true! I babysat a family with a set of twin boys and they were always alternating moods and the like with each other like her girls did in the book.
3) I totally felt for her in the part of the book where she took the girls to the pharmacy and a lady wasn't necessarily being rude, but wasn't being the nicest to Clio simply because she wasn't as outgoing and talkative as Elsa. It made me want to protect her from the rude outside world just as Roper felt.

Overall, the book was alright. I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone unless they're interested in parenting/twin books. I bet I would have loved the book a whole lot more if I had been reading her blog before I read her book, but oh well. The last fourth or so of the book was a bit of a bore to get through, I really wanted it to end. I can't say it was horrible though, it was an alright way to spend the afternoon and I've certainly read MUCH worse. I, personally, don't have the best grammar or prose (I guess that would be the right word..) but I'm sort of a stickler for it when I read, I can't stand sentences that I have to read a few times to makes sure I got the right meaning or finding little discrepancies in the story, but she was fantastic on those fronts!

[Gabrielle W. · Rating 2 out of 5]

The concept of this book is pretty basic; you follow a new mother of twins through the first 3 years of the twins lives.

I don't like cussing and she did cuss a lot throughout the books-saying the f-bomb several time.
I also agree with past reviewers who said that the book was all over the place. I'd finally figure out what age the twins were and then the author would bring up something that happened half a year ago.

I did enjoy the book, but like several other reviewers I got to a point where I wanted it to end.
There was a quote from a random reader of the authors blog in the book;
"I've enjoyed your writing in this forum for some time but lately have not found myself persuaded by or remotely sympathetic to the "dilemmas" you present.........Even with a voice as witty and talented as yours, the incessant whining (much like a toddler's) is unattractive and unbecoming, especially in your relatively privileged circumstance."

Now, I'm not sure what blog that comment was for but it really translates how I started to feel about this book.

The author seemed to be over dramatic about some things (as if she's the only one who's ever had twins and people with one baby are sooooo lucky and can't even compare-like, Oh, you have one baby, well I have TWINS, so I'm better at mothering) and dumb at other things (though her husband was home and willing to watch them, and even though it was a bad day--she still brought both 2? year-old girls to the busy grocery store. And-big surprise- when she got home she had a melt down....)
Incessant whining really describes it....

I won this book through Good Reads First Reads.
What's my final decision on the book? I liked it...but more on the it's OK side.

[Twobusy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really, really wish that Jane Roper's terrific Double Time had been around when I needed it, because it's exactly the kind of thing I was desperately hoping to find when my wife and I discovered we were having twins: a warm, funny, immensely personable and eminently readable take on how someone like me navigated the discovery and aftermath of "Oh my god! It's twins" without crashing on the rocks and sinking to the bottom.

Of course, there's a lot more to the book than just kid/parenting stuff - Roper devotes a sizeable amount of real estate to discussing in sobering and often moving terms her struggles with depression and bipolarism, which are further complicated by the myriad challenges of being a twinfant parent - but make no mistake: twin wrangling is at the heart of the book, and is the engine that drives not only the story but Roper's impressive ability to wrench honestly, truly funny observations from the kind of parenting scenarios that might kill a lesser person.

Good stuff, all the way around.

[Tamera Westhoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

So far I am liking the openness of the book, but could have done without the couple of swear words I've seen. I'm hoping there aren't more!
That was just at the beginning, it got even worse in the book with several f-bombs and many, many other swear words. I felt like I found out more about how to cope with depression than twins, which might be a great thing! My husband is bipolar, so seeing it from that aspect was interesting, but my husband is a completely different kind of bipolar, so it was strange to hear about how she dealth with it. The story was completely choppy without staying at one time. It seemed like there were multiple times when I got established at an age and she would bring up a past age out of nowhere. Really I'm just sad that so many swear words were in there. I started skipping pages like mad at the end, because I just wanted to finish it.

[Stephen Dorneman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll admit, I'm not the target market for this book -- but Jane Roper is a fellow Grubbie (i.e., of Boston's Grub Street Writers), and I knew and enjoyed her writing on blogs and elsewhere, and so I picked it up. What I found in my hands turned out to be a fast-reading memoir of a difficult, humorous, sad, terrifying, and delightful three years of twin-bearing and twin-raising, with the ever-present specter of Jane's depression and its treatment adding notes of poignancy and an additional level of difficulty to what was already a damned hard job. Expectant mothers of all stripes, and particularly mothers and mothers-to-be of twins, should certainly read this book. But anyone who cares about children, and parents, and the struggle to balance a family and a career (which pretty much means all of us), should read it as well.

[Ashley Hillyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this book through the GoodReads First Reads program.

I hadn't heard of her blog before.. but I'm likely to start reading it now.

The book lays out the authors view of the first three years (and part of the pregnancy as well) of her twin daughters' lives. While she battled an ever changing depression-mood disorder.

I'll agree with past reviewers who said that the book was all over the place.. jumping from age to age and then back at times. But overall, it was an easy to read book. At times I wanted to laugh along with her at the girls' antics, and cry with her when she spoke about her depression.

I think she coped with everything quite well, I don't know that I would have been able to.

[Camille · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could definitely relate to a lot of Jane's experiences with raising twins. I didn't like some of the unnecessary bad language. Some parts made me laugh out loud, as I had had similar thoughts. Some situations she wrote about that I have experience with (and am still experiencing) are: contorting your body into strange positions in the car to retrieve a bottle/book/toy, trying to get waffles ready when both kids are screaming for waffles, yelling more than I should at them, shouting, "Just PLEASE BE QUIET!," and just pausing for a moment with Eric and saying out loud that this is really, really hard! I liked how she wrote about the difficulties and the joys, and how they're both more extreme than just double the difficulty or joy!

[Heidi Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I truly enjoyed reading Double Time. I have been reading Jane's blog for years and have also read her novel, Eden Lake (Excellent, by the way), and had been looking forward to the book coming out for a while. I found myself laughing out loud at parts and tearing up at others, so many of her stories are relatable. In addition, as a parent who has dealt with depression, so much resonated with me and it was a comfort to read that someone had also gone through so much of what I have, regardless of raising twins or just 1 like I have. I would highly recommend this to any parent...whether or not you've dealt with depression and whether or not you have 1, 2 or 6 kids; twins or triplets... I think any parent would find this read educational, heartwarming and thoroughly enjoyable.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more, but the narrative except at the beginning and the end seemed disorganized. Sometimes the tale was repetitive. I think it needed better organization of topics. That said, I related to many of the twin-parenting stories and situations that Jane Roper describes. Of course, since everyone is different, there were also parts about the twins that I didn't relate to - but that's not a flaw of the book; it's just the author's family's tale.

It's obvious that Jane Roper is very brave in describing clearly her depression here and in facing her family's current challenges.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

I knew the author very slightly in college, and this has been on my radar for a while now. I expected a book about twins; I did not expect a book about depression - in some ways, the depression overtakes the twins as the major theme of the book. At first, I felt like I wanted more twins and less depression (I'm sure the author felt the same way, really) - but in time, the depression sections kind of won me over, with their insightful and clear descriptions of what it was really like. Roper's writing is easy and conversational, and the book is a fast read.

[Val · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an aunt of twin girls who has seen them almost every single day of their six and a half years, it was really interesting for me to read this book and contrast what I've seen with my sister and nieces vs what this author has gone through as a mother of twins.

The book kept me entertained and intrigued, which is a rare thing when it comes to memoirs. It is very well written, and serves as a good preview for expecting parents of twins in a lot of ways.

[Felicia Dellis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been reading Jane Roper's blog about her life with twins for quite some time and wasn't sure her book would offer anything more than what I had already read. I was so wrong. I enjoy her candid description about what she goes through with twins, with depression, and with life in general as it is an echo for what I often feel in my own life. It is funny and poignant and a book that I would certainly recommend.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir is awesome. It deals very frankly with the difficulties (divided attention, logistics of going outside your baby-proofed house) and joys (two babies laughing at once, hearing them say each others names in their cutie baby voices) of having twins. It also deals frankly with postpartum depression. It's engaging, funny, and conversational, and really well written. Like having a funny friend who also has twins.

[Alika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really great memoir about a specific time in the author's life--adjusting to motherhood, battling depression, and struggling with her writing career--all told with wit and humor and helpful insights. I could definitely relate on more than one level and appreciated the narrative approach. This isn't a "how-to" book, although she does give several examples and tips that worked for her in raising her twin girls.