For Rhiannon Donnelly, all the things that should fill a new mum’s heart with joy make her stomach sink like a stone. Mother to five-month-old Gruffydd, Rhiannon says she is always acutely aware there is a space next to him that should be filled by his twin sister - Mabli.
“Buying for one instead of two is hard,” says children services worker Rhiannon, who is 33 and lives in Cardiff with her husband Nathan, 32. “It’s also upsetting when I see other twins in their matching outfits. The first time it happened was on social media, because my algorithms were all twin stuff, so I had to come off it for a long time as that was all I would see. When I felt ready to go back on it, I put in that I didn’t want to see twins anymore.
"It was a stab in the heart. Seeing twins is not any easier, whatever age they are. I just think, ‘That should have been us’."
