A while ago, my life took a rather dramatic turn, as I became a father for the second time. And then one more time a minute after that. Yes, twins – the perfect way to infuse your wholesome dreams of joyful family life with a cruel, bitter irony.

I remember quite clearly the day we found out we were having twins. “I’m seeing double,” said the ultrasound operator and I tell you, never before have I wished so fervently for a complete stranger to be suffering from an ocular disorder.

Of course, expecting a baby and then finding out it’s twins is an amazing feeling. It’s a bit like waiting for a present to arrive at Christmas and hearing the postman at the door, but instead of giving you just one present, he tells you your life is over.

It’s not that I don’t like the babies – they seem decent enough, if a little unsanitary – but it’s just…two of them at once? Is that strictly necessary? It seems a bit much of a good thing. Babies, I think, are like birthday parties: it’s great to have one, but if you try to have two at once, you’ll just end up confused, exhausted and cleaning up the vomit for weeks afterwards.

Some have pointed out that at least it’s “only” two – at least one can hold a baby in each arm, they say, and of course, given that in Western society women have traditionally been responsible for breastfeeding, there is a certain numerical synchronicity between a pair of twins and a mother’s anatomy. But what these well-meaning folk overlook is the fact that if you have a baby in each arm, you won’t have one free with which to slug back enormous coffee mugs full of hard liquor. So parents of twins will, in most cases, require an intravenous drip.

But yes, it could be worse. Look at Octomom. Eight babies! And she already had six! Fourteen children! There are rabbits out there leaving anonymous bundles on church steps rather than find themselves in such a situation. There are queen ants undergoing tubal ligation before they get so far. The girl reportedly considered her eight babies to be some sort of “blessing”. I would have thought there are few more unambiguous signs that God is out to get you.

To have fourteen children – and eight at once – is just not what we’re built for. There’s a reason we’ve evolved for single births. Our ancestors had to be able to move swiftly and decisively to avoid predators. When the sabre-toothed tiger comes prowling across the plains, if all your neighbours have slung their kids over their shoulders and bolted, while you’re still trying to find fourteen clean loincloths and figuring out how to unfold the eight-seater pram – well, it’s just natural selection waiting to happen.

It’s a crazy time for fertility around the world. Remember that English kid, all of thirteen, who became a father? I read that story and was suddenly overwhelmed with an unprecedented sense of gratitude for my teenage self’s complete failure to attract the opposite sex. Mingled with a similar sense of gratitude that I do not have a father whose first instinct when his son is faced with an intense personal crisis is not to put on a devil mask and start inviting bids.

Unfortunately, in this case, evolution is on the side of the tween-breeders. It’s not our sober, considered, let’s-wait-till-it’s-perfect genes that are going to be propagated far into the future – it’s the genes with a low boredom threshold and limited grasp of biology. After all, the earlier you breed, the less likely you are to be prevented from breeding by a tragic industrial accident or wildlife attack. Which unfortunately means that soon enough, we’ll all be running around in devil masks and getting busy every time the battery in the Wii remote runs out.

So I guess in relative terms, I’ve got it pretty easy with my two new girls. At least my wife doesn’t consider herself some sort of science-fiction industrial-incubation dystopian broodmare. And at least I have a good decade before my son is old enough to be an horrifically young and creepily babyfaced father.

So yes, compared to so many in this world, I’m on easy street. But on the other hand, compared to people who have fewer than two babies, I’m on enormous-pile-of-soiled-nappies street. And that’s got to play hell with your tyres.

But I think there is a lesson to be learned here, and that is that, no matter what your own reproductive proclivities are – teen parenthood, rodentesque mass pregnancies, or whining about your twins in humorous articles – the most important thing is, and always will be, the children. So bearing this in mind, would anyone like a spare one?

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