Numerous studies have established that twins, triplets and other sets of multiples have a higher likelihood of speech delays. (It's also more common in identical twins and multiples than in fraternal.)
When Your Twins Should Start Talking. By 18 months, your twins should be able to say around twenty words. These will be simple words like mama and dadda. Your children will use various sounds and rhythms to “talk” as they play and interact with others.
Although twins are more likely to experience certain perinatal factors that can contribute to speech delays like premature birth and lower birth weights (Bowen, 1999), twin speech delays can most often be traced back to social-language experiences.
Because there is a higher rate of prematurity with multiples, this can lead to baby needing more time to reach their milestones—but this doesn't mean baby is experiencing a delay! In fact, studies have shown there is no difference in reaching motor milestones between twins and singletons within normal range.
Classification. It has been reported that up to 50% of young twins will have their own twin language which they use to communicate only with each other and cannot be understood by others.
Twins are born communicators. Even before very young twins learn language, they can and will communicate non-verbally by looking at each other, staying close together, or hitting each other—and of course playing with each other.
A little more than half of twin pregnancies end in preterm delivery (before 37 weeks). While 40 weeks is the full gestation period of the average pregnancy, most twin pregnancies are delivered at approximately 36 weeks (range 32-38 weeks depending on the type of twin pregnancy).
On the whole, language development among twins has been found to be about 1.7 months behind single babies at 20-months-old and 3.1 months behind at 3 years of age. There's even a name for this phenomenon: The “twinning effect.”
If one identical twin has autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the other twin has a 76 percent chance of also being diagnosed with it. The numbers are lower for fraternal twins. The percentage of fraternal twins who each share an ASD diagnosis is 34 percent for same-sex twins and 18 percent for boy-girl pairs, Dr.
Some say that twins are always hard (yet amazing), while others say they truly didn't find them to be difficult. A few said that the first two months with twins are easy (being in the rose-colored glasses phase), then reality hits from months 3-6 (when the sleep deprivation catches up), then it can get easier again.
Could this delay in their speech development be a sign of autism spectrum disorder (ASD)? Not necessarily. While speech delays, language delays, and learning differences are often a hallmark of ASD, a speech delay by itself does not mean a child has autism.
A review of twin studies of language disability reported concordance (the likelihood that one twin will be affected if the other twin is affected) of 75% for monozygotic (MZ, identical) twins and 43% for dizygotic (DZ, fraternal) twins (Stromswold, 2001).
Do twins develop language more slowly? According to research, speech delay in twins is more likely to happen than to their peers. However, they do tend to catch up by age four.
The researchers determined a 96% chance that if one twin has ASD, the other has it, too. However, symptom scores varied greatly between twins diagnosed with ASD. The researchers estimated that genetic factors contributed to only 9% of the cause of trait variation among these twins.
But not many people realize that speech and language patterns and abilities are also inherited from one's parents. Developments in scientific and medical research have revealed that it is also possible to inherit a predisposition or susceptibility to speech and language disorders.
Children who have an older sister with autism are more likely to also have the condition than are those who have an older brother on the spectrum. The risk is higher among younger brothers than younger sisters.
Studies in identical twins have shown that autism has a strong genetic basis: If one identical twin has autism, the other one has it, too, as much as 90 percent of the time. The new work supports these estimates: In 64 of the 78 twin pairs, both twins have an autism diagnosis.
Identical twins share the same placenta, which may make the risk of cerebral palsy greater when there are complications, such as one twin dying in the womb.
At three months:
The three-month stage marks the end of the “fourth trimester” and your twins can better adapt to life outside the womb. For one thing, they'll sleep in longer stretches of about three- to four-hour chunks.
Not even identical twins do everything at the same time. At some point, your twins will reach a milestone at different times. It can cause a lot of overthinking and worry.
What Is Twin Talk? Rather, the phenomenon is actually attributable to young twins mimicking each other's attempts at language, often incorrectly. All babies babble incoherent sounds; it's their way of practicing vocalization and making the connections in their brain that lead to language development.
There is a well recognized risk of complications for both women and infants of a twin pregnancy, increasing beyond 37 weeks gestation. Preterm birth prior to 37 weeks gestation is a recognized complication of a twin pregnancy, however, up to 50% of twins will be born after this time.
The process of labour is more or less the same as for 1 baby, but your maternity team will usually advise you to have your babies electronically monitored because of the higher risk of complications. This means attaching belts with sensors (1 for each twin) to your bump.
Vaginal Birth of Twins
The good news is that even though you have two babies, you only have to labor once. Once the cervix is open, each baby will have its own pushing stage. This means you will have to push twice, but the majority of the time the second twin is born much more easily than the first.