The Harsh Reality of Living with an Eating Disorder and Having Twins

A twin pregnancy can bring all sorts of unique complications. From the simple fact of carrying two humans inside of you to preparing your home with baby essentials for not one, but two babies. But what about your self-image and mental health while gaining pregnancy weight and taking care of your body postpartum? A brave twin mom shares her reality of dealing with an eating disorder while having her twin boys.

Trigger warning: This transcript discusses eating disorders and mental health. If you or someone you know suffers from an eating disorder or mental illness, we encourage you to seek help from a licensed therapist.

“You can’t you can’t be good at your eating disorder and be a good mom. You just can’t. You have to let go and not be perfect in one of those realms, and it’s really difficult if you’re in the grips of an eating disorder to accept that you’re going to be a good mom.” Alex P.

Meet Alex, a twin mom courageously navigating the challenges of motherhood while battling an eating disorder that began at age 16. Alex’s story delves into the intricate layers of her journey, highlighting the added pressure of wanting to be a good mom amidst her ongoing struggle of an eating disorder and having twins.

Through her candid storytelling, we gain insight into the profound impact of societal pressures and personal insecurities on mental health. Alex’s bravery in sharing her experience challenges the stigma surrounding eating disorders and inspires others to seek help. Join us as we honor Alex’s journey toward healing and strive to create a culture of empathy and support for all mothers.

Listen or watch here, or read the full transcription below.

Show introduction with Lauren Oak:

Nat: Hey everybody it’s me Natalie Diaz and I am here with Miss Lauren Oak. Hi Lauren how are you today?

Lauren: Good, I’m good.

Nat: Let’s be like real podcast people “Hi Lauren, great to have you”

Lauren: Oh thank you for having me.

Nat: Listen it’s our pleasure. I’m glad that we literally could be light-hearted because today we actually have a really heavy episode. If you guys don’t know out there about how we find our guests, we basically just put a call out into the twin world, right through Twiniversity, through our Instagram, through everything, and we say like, “If you have a story that you want to share or if you have advice that you think could be great for other people let’s do it.”

I really want to make sure that we have a nice variety of topics for you guys. We got this one response back from a mom Alex, who actually lives in Europe, and so she’s taping this, I believe, she was in Germany. While we were taping this it was fascinating because Alex has an eating disorder.

So now her twinnies are getting bigger, and she has basically been really struggling with her eating disorder through her pregnancy and now that they’re here. It’s so interesting because it really goes to show that it is a disease, like any other mental illness is a disease.

Lauren: No matter what people say like, “Oh you could get over it” or whatever, but just because you can’t see something, doesn’t mean that they’re not struggling exactly.

Nat: That’s truthfully something that I’ve taught the kids since they were little. Right? Because the thing is like if, let’s say, somebody was mean. Or somebody was like abrupt. Or somebody was like super rude. Even when they were little, I would always say, “You don’t know what happened right before now”.

Lauren: Yes, you don’t know what they’re going through exactly, and I try to give everybody, all of humanity, the benefit of the doubt. Because sometimes, you’re going to meet somebody like Alex, that is really struggling, but is certainly not going to wear it on their sleeve.

Nat: It’s another episode that we went a little bit long, and I also realized that this is one of the first episodes where I barely speak. Oh Lauren, I could not. I just, I didn’t know what to say, you know. I’m usually full with questions. I’m going to tell you, before you listen to this, like trigger warning level 10. If you know somebody that has any eating disorders or any type of mental illness you may want to consider not listening to this episode. I will still love you, and Lauren will still love you. Will you still love them Lauren?

Lauren: Yes, always.

Nat: I don’t want to speak for you, of course you’re right there. This episode is really, really heavy and it’s very serious. If you go to the YouTube video (watch here), you’ll see that I am like wide-eyed and I just I don’t know what to say. It happens a like a bunch on the podcast where want to figure out how, to like, teleport because I just want to like hold the guest.

So when we were taping this she was actually at her sister’s house. She went to her sister’s house for some extra support. It’s just a lot. I don’t even know what to say other than like trigger warning. But you know, if you’re out there and you’re suffering with an eating disorder, despite whatever type it is, really listen to Alex’s story. She’s still in the eye of the storm.

Interview with Alex begins:

Nat: Alex, hello. Thank you for being a part of this. I can’t believe that you’re speaking to me on a break when you could be in a bubble bath getting a cup of coffee and you’re choosing to play with us. Thank you so much.

Alexandra: No worries. It’s just a treat that my sister’s putting my twins to bed for me, so you know I love my holiday.

Nat: Oh, that is definitely. Any day that somebody could take your twins from you is kind of a holiday. So yes, how old are your twins now?

Alexandra: They’re 10 and a half months.

Nat: Oh wow, so they’re still teeny tiny?

Alexandra: They’re still teeny tiny, yeah. One’s a lot tinier than the other.

Nat: Oh my gosh, so tell us a little bit about your twins.

Alexandra: Yes, so their names are Oscar and Felix, and they’re 10 and a half months and they are non-identical boys obviously. They look very different actually one um looks like my sister’s little boy and he’s blonde with chubby cheeks, super cute. And Oscar, the other one, is much smaller and like a little elf; we had him dressed up as an elf um at Christmas and he rocked the part. I think I sent you a photo actually of their elf costumes.

Yeah so like Felix is starting to crawl. Not quite there yet, he’s got lots of teeth. Oscar’s got no teeth and not trying to crawl, but he likes his food. Felix is a bit fussier, but yeah they’re super cute, and I still can’t quite believe that they’re here and I have twins.

It’s pretty amazing, hard work. But I came up to Edinburgh last night on a very late train, and it was delayed, so they slept on the train. But they didn’t sleep when we got here at like 2 in the morning, so I basically had like four hours sleep so I’m a bit like delirious.

Nat: Oh okay, I have a question for you: where did you get your son’s names from?

Alexandra: So kind of the reason why I’m on this podcast is obviously about eating disorders and like my my journey here and my journey as a mother. And I really didn’t believe that I was going to be able to have children, so I had as kind of one of my motivations for getting better, I had like a boy’s name and a girl’s name like on my phone. So I had Felix as one of them and I had another girl’s name um which was Willow. But I obviously didn’t contemplate twins um, so I didn’t have a second boy name.

So Felix was always going to be my boy’s name because it means happy in Latin. Slightly geeky but yeah. I just thought like it would make me so happy if I have a little boy and then the other one we were gonna call him Leo actually. But we had Oscar as another. It’s just quite soft, I didn’t know any other Oscars. It was quite like gentle, but it didn’t sort of like have this personality attached to it in my head you know. But we we put Leo first and then he came out and I was sat there um in the C-section in the room and he was on my chest and I was like he’s not a Leo, he’s an Oscar.

Nat: Oh I love their names it’s so interesting because I don’t I I don’t know if you know this, but their names are the characters in a very famous United States television show.

Alexandra: Wow no, I did not know that.

Nat: They they were roommates, Felix and Oscar. They were roommates that lived together because they both got a divorce from their wife, and so the show is called Odd Couple.

Alexandra: Oh wow, I should look that up.

Nat: You really should. It’s really fantastic. It really is a very iconic show here. So for anybody listening, you’re probably too young, but I remember like it was still in reruns when I was little, so it’s it’s pretty old. But it was such a great great show about like the brotherhood and how they stuck together even though they were polar opposites.

Alexandra: Oh my gosh that’s so cute.

Nat: And Felix definitely seems to be becoming a very popular boy name here in the states too. So when we received all the applications of the people that wanted to be on the podcast, I’m going to be very honest with you and no offense to anybody else, but you were the first one that I was like oh my God I have to talk to her.

So we’ve had discussions about during pregnancy about nutrition, but we have never found somebody who is willing to speak to us about having an eating disorder during pregnancy, and I don’t think it’s as unusual as people might suspect. And people might not have like a diagnosed eating disorder, but there are definitely a lot of people that have either body image issues or have some kind of food issue. So I was so excited to talk to you, and genuinely I really appreciate just getting your insight on this whole thing.

So yeah give us a a little bit of the backstory about you know when you developed an eating disorder and how this affected your pregnancy and did you tell the doctors. Like seriously, I’m dying to kind of dive in.

Alex shares her story

Alexandra: Once again thank you. I wanted to talk about it because yeah I felt very alone during my journey to pregnancy and then during my pregnancy and afterwards. And I think mental health generally is something that’s still a stigma. I still very much believe that mental health is a medical condition; it’s an illness. If you had cancer, you know you’d take medication, you’d be treated, and you would not be so embarrassed or have such a stigma around saying that you had it. But mental health is a real taboo, and I think the secrecy makes it worse. It perpetuates the illness.

How her eating disorder began

So basically, I developed my eating disorder, anorexia, when I was about 16. So I’ve had lots of therapy and I’m not entirely sure exactly how you know it started, but I’ve kind of pinned down a few things which I think it kind of developed as a result of. And I think I was a feeling of lack of control, so it was kind of a way of controlling things. I really had a huge lack of self-confidence. I had real issues at home like my mom had really severe depression and was really struggling with her mental health, and I was having to deal with that and look after her.

And so it was a cry for help because I didn’t know how to get her help, and it was a way of showing people that I was good at something because I didn’t believe I’d get good results. I was in a very high-pressure all-girl school, and I think my eating was a way of numbing my feelings. And it worked. I mean it started off as kind of a benign, “Oh I’ll just lose a bit of weight.” And people noticed, and I got sympathy. I’d been telling people about my mom and her issues, and before exams, I’d had real upsetting traumatizing incidents, but no one listened to me, and my friends didn’t want to know.

But as soon as I started getting ill myself, people actually started to sit up and listen and actually I got doctors involved. My mom got treatment, and she got medication. My mom then started to take care of me because I was ill. And I was seen as the one who was good at dieting. Then I obviously wanted to be the best at that, so then I ended up in hospital for the last year at school as an inpatient. I needed to be the best; I couldn’t just settle at being skinny and giving people a scare. My eating disorder wouldn’t let me rest until I was at the lowest possible weight I could be and showed everyone I could do it.

And then in my head, it was like “Okay, I’ll get better,” but obviously that’s a scary place to be because the more you spiral, the more there’s lots of experiments. There was a Minnesota experiment where they took lots of men and they essentially put them into a starvation experiment and made them lose lots of weight very rapidly. And their minds changed, their brains changed, they became very irrational towards food, and it just it chemically alters you. It becomes a physical illness; you’re controlled by it, and that’s what happened.

And then to cut a long story short, I mean I never fully recovered. I used it as a coping mechanism ever since. When I was discharged to Adult Services, and the support just wasn’t there. So I just learned to deal with it. I put on a front. I didn’t want to talk about it; I kind of did it in secret. There were times where I, on the face of it, looked well. But there were the times I struggled the most. I think my biggest thing is I’ve never felt confident enough to occupy my body and take up space, and I think that’s something I’m only starting to realize as a mom. I realize how much I’m clutching onto my old habits, exercise and dieting.

The complexities of her eating disorder

I’m realizing it’s because I just don’t feel like I’m enough. I don’t feel like I’m a good enough mom; I feel irresponsible for bringing them into this world for what I might do to screw them up. I feel that if I’m bigger and I’m stronger, then that’s kind of who I have to be. And if I’m struggling, no one’s going to take me seriously. It’s only through really wanting to get better for my babies that I’ve really really started to be like “I want to kick this.” Or I at least want to get to a position where I’m managing it so I’m not harming my children.

Essentially I didn’t think I’d ever have children because I never got my periods back regularly. Even when I got pregnant, it was super stressful. It took us about a year to get pregnant. It was a total surprise because me and my husband were just I think more stressed. I didn’t have any belief in myself, and it was scary because I always thought “Right, I’m going to get pregnant and this is going to kick it. This is going to be the motivation.”

But it wasn’t and that was really scary, and that shows how much it had taken over my mind. My husband could be really really upset and he could see me restricting food. He could see me over-exercising, and I could see that he was upset and stressed, and I couldn’t do anything about it.

I couldn’t eat that extra piece of toast, I couldn’t not go for that extra five mile run, I just couldn’t. And I know that I was hurting him, and I know that I was jeopardizing my chances, but I genuinely believed like I’d already screwed my body up. I couldn’t find any information on people with eating disorders who had got pregnant. I thought, “I haven’t had periods for x amount of time, my periods are irregular, I’m probably never going to have kids.”

I’m too scared to face up to that, so I want to stay ill so at least I’ve got a reason for it. I also thought I don’t know if I’m going to be able to click this, and I don’t want to bring my children up in a household with mental health problems. I felt like I couldn’t be a good mom. But I just think that’s not true; I think people with mental health illnesses can actually be the best moms and just because you struggle, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t bring a child into this world. It’s about how you manage it, and whether you’re seeking help.

After she had her twin boys

I think the way I’ve been treated during pregnancy has not made to feel that I’m a danger to my children. I had a severe relapse after I gave birth. I lost a hell of a lot of weight. I got to my some of my lowest weights ever really post pregnancy. So I basically I had a postpartum hemorrhage, and I also had something called an ilas which is where your intestines get blocked. Really, that’s probably something to do with my eating disorder and all the or also being a twin mom.

Essentially no one really knows, but that happened first, and it was the the day after I gave birth; everything was going really well. I was going to be discharged early. I’d had a really really smooth C-section. I’d had a really smooth pregnancy actually, and then suddenly I felt really really faint, really sick, really dizzy, and I fainted.

And I was immediately told I hadn’t eaten enough because eating disorder was all over my nose, and so I was treated like I wasn’t eating enough and everyone was trying to feed me and I was basically like I can’t eat cuz I really felt ill. I was really really bloated, so uncomfortable, and people were trying to, my husband even tried, to force to eat me because he was like really scared. And I suddenly there felt this huge guilt, but I was also really scared because I was like I feel like I’m going to die. And it was only after I fainted the second time, and I was really just sick everywhere, all over the babies.

I’d been breastfeeding, my husband had no idea what to do in terms of feeding, they told him just to get on with it. He didn’t have any bottles of milk. Yeah I totally abandoned the babies, I totally switched off, and that’s how he knew that I was Ill because he knew that I just checked out. And then finally people took me seriously, took me down for an x-ray, and realized that my back my intestines were basically totally blocked and I wasn’t digesting any food and that’s why I fainted.

But then, even after that, I was treated like it was because of my eating disorder because I messed up my internal systems. And even the surgeon who performed on me said you know it’s nothing to do with what I did, I didn’t touch your bowels or your intestines. It’s because you’ve got a history of an eating disorder. I wasn’t able to eat solid food, but I had to ask myself for nutrition drinks which was really difficult. And when I finally got prescribed them, no one gave me them, and so I had to get my husband to go out to get the nutrition drinks.

And it was just like for me, someone with an eating disorder, who was really struggling to actually ask to eat, it seemed like no one cared. It seemed like no one was taking me seriously, and so basically after a week or so, I really got into a bad state.

Everything I put in place: like I’m going to eat regularly, I’m going to do this. It all just felt apart and then I ended up having a postpartum hemorrhage and then I ended up using a lot losing a lot of weight because of that. I had two blood transfusions and was in the hospital for a while.

The added challenge of breastfeeding twins

Essentially my experience as a twin mom is people are very much like don’t breastfeed, you won’t be able to breastfeed. No one breastfeeds, it’s too much on your body, why would you bother? And I was desperate to breastfeed, and I felt like people were like you’ve had a postpartum hemorrhage, you’ve had an ilas, and you’re a twin mom, you’re already on the thin side, don’t breastfeed.

And I was desperately trying to breastfeed, and they were trying to stop me. And they were saying you know your body, but I wasn’t getting any support, and I was super proud of the fact that I was breastfeeding and it was going really well and I was bonding with my babies.

But none of the social workers were coming around, and they were basically you know trying to give me topups. They weren’t supporting me. I was really trying to do the tandem feed; it was really sore, I couldn’t get the position right. And I knew that it would help me if I could have someone just to support me with that, but they didn’t provide any of that. They just told me don’t bother, and even my husband was like, you know make your life easy for yourself, why are you bothering?

And I was just thinking this isn’t for an eating issue, and people were trying to also insinuate I was doing it for calorie burning reasons. I was like I genuinely am not, like I want to do this for my babies, and I never thought I’d get pregnant let alone be able to breastfeed. This is just a miracle, like when my milk came in for the first time I was like oh my goodness, my body is just a miracle. But obviously breastfeeding twins really does drain you, and I wasn’t able to eat enough, and I was ravenous all the time.

The challenge of eating during pregnancy and postpartum

But the more ravenous I was, the more I was unable to eat because the more scared I was of putting food into my mouth. I was scared of honoring my hunger because I was scared that I would go over the top and put on loads of weight. I couldn’t think to myself I’m ravenous because I’m burning a lot of energy.

No one could really tell me how much energy because there’s not a huge amount of real data on how much weight gain a twin mom should have. Yeah there a lot of variables with twin moms, it’s like let’s follow the same as for a singleton and that’s not great for someone with an eating disorder.

Because as much as you think you get pregnant and you think oh the eating is going to out the window because you want to do the best for your children, it doesn’t. You’re still conscious about weight gain, and you feel guilty about that because I was simultaneously terrified my babies weren’t growing. To the point where I was paralyzed; I was having scans every two weeks and literally days before, I was so terrified that my babies weren’t growing.

Then when I was told my babies were growing, my eating disorder was saying oh you don’t need to eat so much your baby’s growing. And then I was gaining weight, but I didn’t think I was eating a huge amount. But then people were telling me oh you’re growing, your babies are growing. But I didn’t think I was putting on that much weight, and I was not feeling well at all. I was very low in energy.

I was kind of on a trajectory for a singleton pregnancy, and I was a twin pregnancy obviously. But they were like oh it doesn’t matter as long as you’re putting on some weight and the babies are doing fine, it’ll be fine. And I just knew that my body was probably eating itself away and it wasn’t going to look good after pregnancy.

But my body was doing everything it could just to keep these babies safe, so I was retaining weight and growing them, but everything was going into my babies. But as long as my babies were okay, that kind of is all that mattered. Yeah I felt like I was a bit of a fraud during pregnancy. I did tell people from the word go about my history. And I felt it was almost like I did get people to talk to, but it was very much like the concern was on the babies and I was doing okay and therefore no one could really help me.

For the remainder of Alex’s story, be sure to watch full the interview by scrolling to the top of this page or clicking here.

Want to listen to more inspiring stories like Alex’s? Find more Twiniversity podcast episodes here!

Latest Twiniversity Articles