Interview with Jane Seymour

Well, first I wrote a book about it called Two at a Time: A Journey Through Twin Pregnancy, that book really dealt with it day by day. But basically, I’d already had two very healthy pregnancies earlier in my life, and I was trying in my early 40’s to have in-vitro to have a baby and I had two pregnancies that failed about four-five weeks in and we had almost given up. But we got really fortunate and I managed to hold a pregnancy. The original pregnancy, I had three embryos that took, but one never really formed and so I ended up with the twins.

Everything is a calculated risk. …Whereas it is possible later to have children with in-vitro, it is not necessarily always easy. Make sure you have a great doctor and make sure you’re aware of what you need to watch out for, For example, a big thing would be hypertension or preeclampsia as they call it.

As you know, being a mother yourself of twins, it’s different at different stages. At first, just the logistics of feeding them. But the beauty of the human body is you have two feeding apparatus attached to your body... I was referred to as the “Dairy Queen.” Then, having some help helped me enormously because I had to go back to work within about three weeks. But then as they grew up, the great news was they had each other to be with.

I joke with them now. When they fight one another, I call it "twinning" because when they were babies they used to just curl into one another which i call twinning. Now our joke in the family is when they are literally wrestling almost to the death, that I call that a different form of twinning. But you know, they’re boys, they like to wrestle. Everybody I know that has twin boys tells me that happens.

The other thing about twins is that they are completely different. Mine you know, are fraternal, but even mothers of identical twins always tell me how different the twins are, psychologically and emotionally and in every possible way. My two, it always makes me laugh because they’re both blond. But one has naturally curly hair, one has dead straight hair. One has always been, well most of his life, weighed at least 25 pounds, substantially more than the other one, and at least 2 or 3 inches taller, and you know he’s quite stocky whereas the other one is very skinny and smaller. People say “Oh are they identical?” and I’m kind of going “Uhhh, where did we get that idea...”

They were in different classes when they were in public school. That was good because they were able to develop different friends. A lot of their friends are actually mutual friends. Now they’re in a private school; in this school, the way they do the curriculum, some classes they are together and most of the classes they are not...

I think everyone has different circumstances depending on what work they do. When I was on Dr. Quinn... they were tiny babies; they gave me a trailer that I could put a couple of cribs in and I had a nanny there, so I was able to be with them even though I was working up to 16 hours a day. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to see my children at all when I was doing Dr. Quinn.

Obviously I have people who help me. I have an assistant because I do a lot of different things, I don’t just act. I design and I paint and... I’m traveling a lot. So I need somebody that can coordinate and be on top of what’s happening with the children.

In terms of the kids having friends over to play, we always find it’s best to have, well certainly one other kid, but usually two other kids… One of the things [that is good for] twins -- and not just twins-- is sleepovers. [T]hey did sleepovers from the time they were born, pretty much. … I always tell people I think it’s really healthy to do for your child so that your child can trust someone else.