Seeing double: 12 sets of twins among Betty Gibson School’s diverse population

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This article was published 19/12/2015 (3759 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Walk in the front doors of Betty Gibson School and one of the first things you might notice is a framed picture that was taken at the beginning of the school year.

While there are 24 students in the photo, this isn’t your average class picture. It’s a celebration of the 12 sets of twins enrolled in the kindergarten to Grade 8 school this year.

“I’m pretty confident not many schools would have that many sets of multiples — certainly at the schools I’ve been at in the past there hasn’t been that many,” Betty Gibson principal Blaine Aston said.

There are four sets in grades 1 and 2, and the exponential jump in multiples is due to the fact that many of the younger siblings are new to the school this year.

Aston adds that one set of twins actually left the school in November, only to be replaced by another.

Staff at Betty Gibson have taken to celebrating the twins as another aspect of the school’s diversity.

“We’re a very diverse school, we have kids from all cultures and nationalities … and I would say the twins kind of model that dynamic,” Aston said.

Phys-ed teacher Craig Anderson has worked at Betty Gibson for 14 years and has never seen this many twins enrolled at one time.

For Anderson, the beginning of the school year offered an interesting set of dilemmas.

“Because there’s so many that look so similar, recognizing person A from person B at times is a struggle earlier in the year,” he said. “But you quickly learn tendencies that one might do that the other doesn’t.”

Betty Gibson puts twins in separate classrooms as a school policy, but Aston says parents have a say in whether they would like the siblings to be split up.

“We feel it’s a good opportunity for them to meet other kids and associate with others,” Aston said.

Anderson says this policy has been beneficial in his experience, as it allows the students to become “socially responsible” for themselves and not their brother or sister.

“Even though they are twins, they are their own people and they get to make their own decisions,” Anderson said, adding that he has noticed the oft-mentioned “twin connection” at play in the gym.

“The younger ones really feed off each other, so if one’s upset, usually you’ll find the other one will be upset, too … and they’re not really competitive with each other,” he said. “Once they’re older, you wouldn’t be able to tell that they were twins — they act differently, they’re kind of their own people at that point.”

Karen and Sofia Ramirez Restrepo are in Grade 7 and have attended Betty Gibson for six years.

During our interview, the girls answer almost every question in sync without looking at each other. Despite their similarities, the girls have different interests — Karen is fond of science, while Sofia gravitates toward art.

The girls don’t mind being in separate classes at school, but say it’s nice to always have a friend around at home.

“It’s fun … we’re never alone, we always have each other,” Karen said.

“We can play together and help each other out if one of us needs it,” Sofia added.

Their mother, Luce Restrepo, says her daughters have always exhibited a special kind of teamwork.

“When they were almost six or eight months … I was standing in the kitchen and saw them out of their bed,” Restrepo said, adding that one of the girls had figured out how to roll up the mattress in their crib so the other could climb out through an opening in the slats.

The family is originally from Colombia, and Restrepo says a number of other multiples appear on the family tree — her grandmother, for example, gave birth to 23 children, including several sets of twins and even triplets.

Finding out she was also carrying twins was a happy surprise.

“It’s an amazing experience … they have been a blessing for me … they are very loving girls … and they are very happy to be at this school,” Restrepo said.

 

Twinspotting in Brandon

The many multiples at Betty Gibson might actually be a snapshot of a phenomenon happening within the larger community, according to a local pediatrician.

Dr. Emmett Elves has worked at the Brandon Clinic for 37 years and says he has seen the number of women carrying twins increase by 50 per cent during his tenure.

“Twin-wise, it has gone up certainly very significantly — it’s about one out of 50 pregnancies now,” Elves said, adding that triplets and quadruplets are still quite rare.

While part of the increase is due to a higher birth rate and a growing population, Elves believes healthier lifestyles are playing a part.

In a 2007 study published in the Human Reproduction Update by Oxford Journals, researchers suggest that a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle may contribute to higher success with in vitro fertilization.

Elves says this is also true in natural conception.

“If the host is healthier and the uterine environment is healthier, then there’s more chance that you’ll have a successful pregnancy with more than one (baby),” he said.

There is an average of 16 twins delivered at the Brandon Regional Health Centre each year, with 176 twins born there from 2005-15, according to the hospital’s maternal-child care team manager.

Based on statistics compiled by Multiple Births Canada in 2011, the incidence of twins has been on the rise across the country. There are roughly 6,000 sets of twins born in Canada each year and there was a one per cent rise in the number of multiple births between 1995 and 2008.

“People are waiting longer to have babies … as we get older, we do tend to have multiples more often,” said Heather McAuley, chair of Multiple Births Canada.

McAuley also says the more children a woman has had also raises the chances of having multiples.

 

Local support for families with multiples

Multiple Births Canada offers support services and resources for families with multiples and has brick-and-mortar chapters established in nearly every province — although not in Manitoba.

“It’s a completely different experience in the pregnancy, worry levels are so much higher,” said McAuley, who has four children and one set of twins herself.

Since the news of multiples is a surprise for most parents, McAuley says it’s important for them to get information from people who have been through the experience.

It was this sentiment that caused Brandon mom Cara Gallagher to start a Facebook support group for families with multiples.

“When I was pregnant, I couldn’t find a local group. I didn’t know anyone within my age group that had twins or were expecting twins,” Gallagher said.

She started the group when her twin daughters were six months old and the Life With Multiples group has ballooned to roughly 200 members in four years — 80 per cent of whom are from the Westman area.

“We talk about everything from tips for making pregnancy go smoother … what to expect if there is a (neonatal intensive-care unit) stay … and how to breastfeed twins,” Gallagher said, adding that the group is secret to ensure it is a safe space for parents to share. However, anyone interested in joining can contact her directly via Facebook.

Ashley Synyshyn’s twin son and daughter are now 18 months old, and she says the Facebook group was a huge help in keeping her sane during the early days.

“Just having people who understood how crazy things were and could encourage us newer moms that things were going to get better was really helpful,” Synyshyn said. “The information we got from our midwives and doctors was a lot more medical and this was a lot more personal and what it was going to be like to parent.”

While there are support groups that meet regularly in Winnipeg — like Manitoba Families of Multiples — Synyshyn says she wishes a similar organization existed in Brandon.

 

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