Skip to content
  • Elissa, left, and Emma Dunn play on a slide at...

    Elissa, left, and Emma Dunn play on a slide at Boiseranc Park in Buena Park on Monday. Their older sister, Olivia Dunn, is in the background. According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 34 of every 1,000 babies born in 2014 - the same year as the Dunn girls - were twins.

  • Sharla Kall plays with her twins Lilly, left, and Tyler,...

    Sharla Kall plays with her twins Lilly, left, and Tyler, 11 months in the playroom dubbed "twinlandia" at their Tustin home.

  • When the camera is pointed at twins Austin Lynch, 9,...

    When the camera is pointed at twins Austin Lynch, 9, left, and Ryan their heads come together automatically and Ryan puts his arm around the other naturally. Although they're identical twins they don't like dressing alike. The Huntington Beach twins share a room and both play soccer, baseball and basketball.

  • Sharla Kall with her bundles of joy, twins Lilly, left,...

    Sharla Kall with her bundles of joy, twins Lilly, left, and Tyler, 11 months, at their Tustin home.

  • Karen Brink, mom of Austin, left, and Ryan Lynch, both...

    Karen Brink, mom of Austin, left, and Ryan Lynch, both 9, is a member of Orange Coast Mothers of Multiples.

  • Newborn Robbie Lawson, left, keeps close to his twin brother,...

    Newborn Robbie Lawson, left, keeps close to his twin brother, Jack, at The Women's Hospital at Saddleback Memorial in August 2014. The twins were born at Saddleback Memorial with Jack arriving first, weighing 9 pounds, 10 ounces, followed by Robbie, born 20 minutes later, weighing 9 pounds, 3 ounces. A record number of twins were delivered by American moms in 2014 – 33.9 twins per every 1,000 births, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  • Sharla and Travis Kall of Tustin keep a schedule to...

    Sharla and Travis Kall of Tustin keep a schedule to help them manage their twins, Tyler and Lilly, 11 months.

  • Sharla Kall dresses one of her twins, 11-month-old Tyler, at...

    Sharla Kall dresses one of her twins, 11-month-old Tyler, at her Tustin home.

  • Parents Karen Brink, husband Matthew Lynch and their chihuahua mix...

    Parents Karen Brink, husband Matthew Lynch and their chihuahua mix Reilly take shelter at their Huntington Beach home as they watch twins Austin Lynch, 9, on floor, and Ryan play hard ball with soft balls.

  • Tyler and Lilly Kall, 11 months, provide two times the...

    Tyler and Lilly Kall, 11 months, provide two times the cuteness for parents Sharla and Travis Kall of Tustin.

  • Melissa Dunn plays with her twin girls, Emma, left and...

    Melissa Dunn plays with her twin girls, Emma, left and Elissa.

  • Red laces help Austin and Ryan Lynch's parents spot a...

    Red laces help Austin and Ryan Lynch's parents spot a particular twin when they're on the field.

of

Expand
Author
PUBLISHED: | UPDATED:

As it does for most new parents, life changed for Melissa Dunn when she gave birth on March 23, 2014.

But for Dunn, and an increasing number of parents, the change was twice what it might’ve been: She had identical twins, Elissa and Emma.

“The intensity of things is completely different, having two toddlers teething versus one,” said Dunn, 31, of Buena Park.

“It takes a lot more time to get out of the house. You have to pack more, prepare more. It can be stressful.”

Elissa and Emma, now curly-haired and approaching their second birthdays, were part of a twin record set in the United States in 2014. According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 34 of every 1,000 babies born that year were twins.

The rate is only a slight increase from the 33.7 per 1,000 births the year prior, but it set a new high in a nation where more and more women are waiting to have babies and turning to fertility treatments. Both factors can cause serious complications – and lead to multiple births.

“Twin births tend to be toward older moms,” said Cal State Fullerton psychology professor Nancy Segal, who researches and writes about twins as the director of the school’s Twin Studies Center.

“As women get older, reproductive functions aren’t as good as they used to be. It could be that two eggs are just part of the aging process.”

Women older than 35 are more likely to produce multiple eggs in a cycle, said Dr. David Diaz, a reproductive endocrinologist at Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center in Fountain Valley.

As recently as 1980, women over 30 accounted for about 1 in 5 births, but that’s been changing quickly.

From 2000 to 2009, women over age 30 accounted for about 35 percent of all births. And in 2014, the over-30 cohort accounted for 42 percent of all births.

But the age of mothers only partially explains the increasing number of twins. Another factor is the popularity of reproductive technology, including in vitro fertilization.

About 35 percent of twin births – and 77 percent of triplet and “higher order births” – are due to medically assisted conceptions, according to a 2013 study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

With those multiple births comes increased risk of preterm birth or low birth weight. Multiple births also put women at risk of high blood pressure, gestational diabetes, early labor, cesarean section and prolonged hospitalization.

Karen Brink, a 46-year-old mother from Huntington Beach who did not have fertility treatments, said she had high blood pressure and was put on bed rest for four months before she gave birth to her two sons nine years ago. She’s now a leader of the support group Orange Coast Mothers of Multiples.

“There are some moms in the club where the twins are born early or with problems, and a lot of them have to be in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) for days, weeks, and that’s really hard on the moms,” she said.

Because of the risks, doctors recently have been implanting fewer embryos during in vitro fertilization than they did just a few years ago.

Experts say that might explain why recent CDC figures show the rate of triplet and higher order births dipped 5 percent in 2014, to 1.1 for every 1,000. About 1 in every 881 babies born in 2014 was a triplet, quadruplet or part of a higher-number set.

Guidelines urging use of fewer embryos were strengthened after 2009’s “Octomom” case, in which Nadya Suleman gave birth to octuplets after her doctor transferred 12 embryos.

“What might have been a triplet birth in the past is now a twin birth,” said Michelle Osterman, one of the authors of the CDC report.

Implanting more embryos does not increase the chance of getting pregnant, but it does increase the odds of having multiple babies.

“People should understand that the uterus was best designed to hold one fetus – it is much healthier for the woman and her child,” said Diaz, of Orange Coast Memorial.

“A lot of people think putting in two (embryos) will increase their rate of pregnancy, but evidence shows that does not seem to be true. People go on the Internet and read all sorts of inaccurate data.”

The rise of twins hasn’t gone unnoticed by schools and companies that sell products aimed at parents and children.

Recognizing that having twins can amplify the financial stress of having and raising children (the median cost of delivery alone for multiple births is nearly three times higher than for single births, according to a UC San Francisco study), more organizations are offering 2-for-1 scholarships and 2-for-1 deals on baby products, said Segal of Cal State Fullerton.

And, she said, educators and others are confronting issues specific to twins, such as whether they should be in the same classrooms.

“Is having twins crazy?” asked Sharla Kall, laughing. “Yeah.”

In her Tustin townhome Monday morning, Kall gracefully balanced Tyler on her hip as she wiped down a spill with her foot and kept a watchful eye on his twin sister, Lilly. The 11-month-old babies wore matching red-and-white-striped jumpers. A little red bow crowned Lilly’s head.

Kall learned she was having twins the day before her 30th birthday. When an ultrasound tech told her and her husband the news, she said he started laughing.

“We had only planned for one, but it’s not like you can take one away. We literally had no words. We were in shock for a long time.”

More than nine years after the birth of her twin boys, Orange Coast Mothers of Multiples’ Brink still remembers a similar feeling of surprise.

But now she can say: “Twins are a lot of work, but a lot of fun.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Contact the writer: jchandler@ocrgister.com and @jennakchandler on Twitter