What it’s like to be a triplet

Part of me dreads the moment when the question of siblings comes up. I understand that people who haven’t bumped into many of Our Kind before are curious about what it’s like, but I still find it uncomfortable seeing your eyes widen slightly in surprise, as two more of me appear before you, like a drunken mirage. In my 24 years of experience, your first response will likely go one of four ways:

1. Are you identical?
2. I’ve never met a triplet before.
3. My friend’s cousin’s ex-boyfriend’s mother is a triplet.
4. Did your parents have fertility treatment?

Here are my responses.

1. I am fascinated by this question. It’s particularly fun if we’ve just been discussing my brother, and you’ve only found out I’m a triplet when I reveal we’re the same age. Firstly, while Matt is a fine-looking guy, I’d rather not look like him. Especially the beard. Secondly, having triplets at all is pretty freaky, having three who are genetically identical is about as likely as plunging your hand into a haystack and pulling out the needle you lost in there three months ago. OK, I haven’t checked the actual odds, but the point is, it’s not likely. I think the reason that perfectly logical people tend to jump to this one is that it helps you get your head around the visuals of three siblings all born at once.
2. Lucky me, taking your triplet virginity. Unfortunately you’re the 800^th person who’s told me that. Have a balloon and a sticker.
3. I probably know them through our secret triplet club* even though they live in Alaska. And you can definitely ascribe all aspects of their personality and life to me.
4. Er, can we please not discuss my parents’ sexual activities? On hearing that your birthday is in September, I don’t casually ask if that means your parents got a bit randy after one too many Christmas sherries, or whether you were conceived to the sound of Michael Buble’s Christmas hits, or Noddy Holder’s shrieking vocals. Luckily, it’s generally my mum who gets this one. The last person who asked me this didn’t exactly have an astute understanding of personal boundaries.

In fairness, I can understand the thought process behind these responses. Being a triplet is rare enough that it warrants comment, but it’s not a personal achievement that you can congratulate me on, or get much conversational material from. It’s even harder when I have to explain that I’m a triplet as context to an anecdote, as it inevitably sounds like I’m somehow bragging about my ‘special’ status.

Most of the time, the conversation moves on to more interesting matters. Sometimes, however, people want to know ‘What’s it like being a triplet?’ Here’s my carefully thought-through, incredibly insightful first-hand account.

I have no idea. To me – to us – you’re the freak. What do you mean you’ve never shared your birthday with two other people? How is it that you’ve never had your sibling in the same school year as you?

OK, since I reeled you in this far based on that title, I'll give it a go. On the one hand, we were all on a level playing field from the start. There’s no age-related basis for any of us to take all the responsibility (although it often gets shared out along gender lines instead.) There’s no ‘Why is he allowed to watch The Exorcist when I’m stuck with Thomas the Tank Engine?’ or ‘Why can she can drink vodka shots in the pub all night when I have a 9pm curfew?’ when you’re all the same age. The rules got made up and applied to all of us at the same time, so there was no sense of injustice over ‘But Stacey got a car when she was seventeen, where’s mine?’

There are drawbacks, too. Getting everything in one hit, tripled, can be tough. Events like exam results become highly pressured, as our parents are faced with comforting and celebrating at the same time. Worse than that, however, is the tendency for others to view us as a big lump, vaguely divided into three. As any siblings can attest to, this was probably not helped by the matching clothes (thanks for that, Mum).

This is less of a problem now we’re all spread out and making our own friends, but when we were younger, we were very much viewed as ‘The Triplets’. Even when alone, it often felt as though people could only properly place me when they remembered that ah, yes, you’re one of the three. Even science turned against us: I remember one dispiriting program where Professor Robert Winston cheerfully announced that the reason humans don’t give birth to more than one child at once is so we learn to love our offspring as individuals, and are therefore more likely to take care of them in the face of sabre-tooth tiger attacks. Thanks, Bob.

This tendency to picture triplets as clones, rather than separate people, is even funnier because the three of us are as different as, you know, ‘normal’ siblings. Matt speaks rarely but thoughtfully, and has an outrageously dark sense of humour and a love of horror films that would leave me sleeping bolt upright with a shotgun for months. Claire has a beautifully artistic mind and the skills to match, is very messy (own it, sis), and incredibly empathetic. I am bossy, efficient with everything but timekeeping, and with a tendency to babble into any conversational silence. Yes, there are similarities between us, like our eyes and a fondness for feminist outbursts, but no more than you would expect from fraternal siblings of any age gap.

Similarly, just as people assume the youngest child is spoilt and the oldest is in charge, being a triplet has not endowed me with personality traits you might expect someone who's always been flanked by two others to have. It definitely has not made me good at sharing. I tend to be independent, and I don’t like being told what to do, and I never have.

I’m sorry to squash anyone’s fantasies about how amazing it would be to have a sibling who can double as another you, as seems to happen in all those delightful books you grew up reading (Double Act was a personal favourite). However, the happy truth is that any siblings, or even friends, who spend enough time together can develop that almost uncanny psychic bond. You don’t need to share a womb, a birthday cake or a bloodline to connect with someone like that. 

Ultimately, I know that as with having a sibling of any age, the experience of being a triplet has shaped my identity and my life. However, I’d also like to think there are more important and interesting things to me than the fact I share my birthday with two other awesome Lavenders.

*Actually, there is a secret triplet club. It’s called Super Twins, which is a term for multiple births of more than twins, who apparently aren’t impressive enough any more. It wasn’t actually the place where we all made triplet-only conspiracies as much as an opportunity for our parents to find solidarity and alcohol while we all ran riot in whoever’s house was due to be destroyed that month.