When our girls were born, I literally didn’t know anyone else who had twins. When they were about five weeks old, I finally contacted a former colleague, whose daughter in Louisville had four-month old twins. He gave me her phone number, and I called her up…and I connected with someone I didn’t know, better than I’d connected with almost anyone in the six weeks prior to that.
Since then, of course, BGMoMs was founded. Just a year after our first meeting, in February 2010, we have almost 50 local MoMs on our contact list, between Facebook and email and meetings. WOW!
Also through the beauty of Facebook, I’ve reconnected with a lot of my former high school classmates, most of whom I haven’t seen or talked to since we graduated. Interestingly, there’s a “twin” component to that, too.
I graduated in a class of 69 people. To my knowledge, five of us have / are expecting twins! And what’s even crazier is that we all used to pal around together…if I didn’t know better, I’d say there was something in the water! 🙂
Two years ago, little did I know I just needed to open by backdoor, and fire up Facebook!
I share these little anecdotes in the context of the release of the birth data for 2008.
Over 138,000 twins were born in 2008, which equates to 32.6 twins per 1,000 live births. That’s up 1% from 2007.
New Jersey reports the highest number of twin births per 1,000 live births, at 43.5. Kentucky is slightly below average, at 29.7.
The twinning rate rose very significantly from 1980 to 2004, but has been relatively stable since then.
The birth rate of triplets and higher-order multiples, currently 147.6 per 100,000 live births, peaked in 1998 but is down 24% since then.
The preterm birth rate [babies born before 37 weeks] declined for a second straight year (all births, not just multiples), to 12.3%.
Thank you to Christina Baglivi Tinglof’s Blog About Twins for the link to these statistics. I’ve also added the link to her blog in our Online Multiples Resources tab.
No matter how you slice it, I think there’s strength in numbers! 🙂
Mandy, mom to two-year old fraternal twin girls
BG Area Mothers of Multiples 
Wow. Thanks for the mention! I, too, had trouble finding moms of multiples when I had my twins 15 years ago. The Internet was fairly new, too, so it was a bit isolating. No more though!