The Humiliating Reality of Trying Baby Yoga With Twins

I'm currently lying on a foam mat that smells faintly of damp digestive biscuits and municipal floor cleaner in a drafty church hall in Hackney. The instructor, a woman named Serenity who's wearing linen trousers that look entirely too comfortable for a Tuesday morning, is telling a circle of exhausted parents to "breathe through our pelvic floors." I'd love to attempt this biological impossibility, but I'm entirely occupied. I'm currently holding two ten-week-old girls. Twin A is rigid as a plank of MDF, furiously refusing to bend her knees. Twin B is actively trying to eat my left nostril.

This is what happens when you let sleep deprivation make your scheduling decisions. You think you're going to bond with your offspring in a quiet, mindful environment, and instead, you end up sweating through a t-shirt while a woman with a singing bowl tells you your aura is tense.

The midnight delusion that got me here

The whole thing started because I made the fatal error of going online at 3am. Twin A had been doing this thing where she would just aggressively scream at the ceiling for two hours every evening. Our GP, a man who looked like he hadn't slept since the late nineties, vaguely suggested we look into some sort of infant massage or movement class for "colic and bonding." I think he mumbled something about the digestive tract and trapped wind, but frankly, my understanding of infant biology is entirely based on frantic Google searches in the dark.

So, sitting in the glow of my smartphone, bouncing a furious baby on my knee, I tried to search for a video. I got as far as typing 'baby yo' with one sweaty thumb before the phone was violently swatted out of my hand by a tiny, flailing fist. The next morning, running on roughly forty minutes of broken sleep, I found a local class, paid a completely unreasonable amount of money, and committed us to six weeks of public humiliation.

The physics of the double buggy

Getting to the class is an extreme sport that no one prepares you for. Our Victorian terrace has a hallway so narrow that I've to assemble the double buggy on the pavement like I’m working in a Formula One pit lane. You wedge one twin into the left seat, desperately trying to strap her in before she arches her back and slides out like a greased piglet. Then you grab the second twin, who has inevitably decided this is the exact moment to fill her nappy.

You run back inside, do a frantic wipe-down that would appall any health visitor, shove her into a fresh nappy, and run back out to the pavement where Twin A is now crying because a pigeon looked at her aggressively. You finally push the pram down the road, the wheels catching on every single uneven paving stone in East London, sweating profusely into your winter coat because it’s freezing outside but boiling the second you exert any physical effort. By the time I actually wrestled the double buggy through the heavy oak doors of the community centre, the class had already started, and twelve incredibly put-together mothers turned to watch me dismantle my pram with the chaotic energy of a man disarming a bomb.

We did eventually sit down on our mat. I spent the next four minutes just trying to catch my breath while Serenity talked about the importance of centering our energy, which I ignored completely in favour of trying to find the muslin cloth I knew I had packed.

What the class actually looks like

If you've never been to one of these sessions, please wipe the image of a serene yoga studio from your mind. It's basically a hostage situation with nursery rhymes. The babies dictate everything. Serenity would politely ask us to hold our babies' lower legs and gently push their knees toward their tummies to help with trapped gas.

In theory, you pump their legs like they're riding a tiny, invisible bicycle, and it acts like a biological bellows, forcefully expelling whatever wind is causing them to scream. In reality, my daughters have the muscle tension of a coiled spring. You can't force a baby to bend a limb they don't wish to bend. I tried to gently cycle Twin B's legs, and she looked at me with such deep betrayal that I immediately stopped and just patted her on the head instead.

At one point, Serenity asked us to put our children into a happy baby yoga pose, which involves them lying on their backs while you help them hold their feet. Have you ever tried to maneuver two slippery, writhing infants into a happy baby yoga pose simultaneously while maintaining eye contact with a stranger across the room? They looked less like happy babies and more like confused turtles stuck on their shells. I ended up just sort of mashing their feet together and hoping Serenity wasn't grading us.

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What we genuinely wore to this disaster

One thing I learned very quickly is that whatever you dress them in needs to be virtually indestructible but also capable of stretching in weird directions without exposing a nappy blowout to the general public. My absolute lifesaver during these sessions was the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Sleeveless Infant Onesie.

When you're dealing with twins, you don't have the mental capacity for complicated outfits with tiny buttons that require a magnifying glass to fasten. You need something that stretches when you're forcing their little legs into a bicycle shape to squeeze out a fart, and this bodysuit seriously delivers. It didn't chafe when they were squirming on the foam mats, it held the heavy, wet nappies firmly in place during the weird lifting exercises, and honestly, it’s one of the few things we own that hasn't completely unraveled after thirty rounds in our washing machine. The organic cotton is brilliant because they both inherited my tragically sensitive skin, and this doesn't seem to make them break out in those weird red blotches when they get too warm.

My wife, who has a much higher tolerance for aesthetics than I do, had bought the Flutter Sleeve Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit for Twin A because she wanted her to look nice for her "social debut." I'll admit, it's incredibly cute. The little flutter sleeves are charming. However, trying to appreciate the delicate ruffled detailing when your child has just loudly passed wind during the quiet meditation portion of the class is difficult. It’s a beautiful piece of clothing, but perhaps save it for a coffee shop visit rather than an athletic endeavour in a drafty hall.

The toys that failed to distract them

About twenty minutes into the class, the collective patience of the room broke. One baby started crying, which set off a chain reaction, and suddenly the church hall sounded like a fire alarm testing facility. Serenity told us to "use our soothing tools."

I reached into my bag of tricks. A week prior, I had bought the Wooden Baby Gym Set with Animal Toys to practice our floor work at home. It’s... fine. It looks stunning in the living room, very aesthetically pleasing, and much better than the horrific plastic monstrosities that light up and play tinny music. But my girls just use it as a structural support for their wrestling matches. Twin A aggressively glares at the wooden elephant, while Twin B tries to dismantle the integrity of the A-frame. It's a lovely bit of kit for a calmer child, but it wasn't going to help me here on the road.

Instead, I shoved a Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy into Twin B's hand. I don't even think she's actively teething yet, she just likes chewing on things out of pure spite. But the flat, easy-to-grasp shape honestly kept her occupied for exactly four minutes, which in twin-time is roughly equivalent to a long weekend in the Bahamas. It's completely non-toxic, which is great because she managed to drop it on the questionable church floor, pick it back up, and put it in her mouth before I could stop her. At least the teether itself was clean to begin with.

The aftermath and the science I barely understand

We left the class twenty minutes early. I couldn't take the pressure of Twin A aggressively trying to roll off the mat into an older baby's face while Twin B yelled at the ceiling lights. I packed up the pram with the speed of a man fleeing a crime scene, nodded apologetically at Serenity, and practically ran down the street.

But here's the infuriating part: that afternoon, they both slept for two straight hours.

I don't know if it was the leg cycling, the vague attempts at crossing their midlines (which some health visitor once told me helps coordinate the left and right sides of their brains, though I've no idea how that works), or just the sheer exhaustion of screaming in a public building. Studies apparently say that skin-to-skin contact and rhythmic movement lower infant cortisol levels. Maybe it worked. Maybe they were just tired of looking at my stressed face. Either way, sitting in the quiet kitchen, drinking a cup of tea that was really still hot, I realized I'd probably go back the next week. The things we do for a moment of silence.

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Questions you might genuinely have

Is it genuinely safe to fold my baby in half?
According to every medical professional I've awkwardly asked, younger babies are basically made of rubber and cartilage, but you should never force a stretch. If they lock their knees, leave their knees alone. Let them be a plank. If your kid has clicky hips or reflux, definitely ask your GP before you start aggressively bicycling their legs, unless you want vomit down your shirt.

When can I start doing this to them?
Most places won't let you through the door until the babies are about 6 to 8 weeks old. This is mostly because you need to have had your own postnatal checkup, and the babies need to have enough neck control so their heads don't wobble around like loose apples in a bag when you pick them up.

Will this honestly cure colic?
Nothing "cures" colic except time and the slow erosion of your sanity, but the stomach massages and the knee-to-chest movements genuinely do help them fart. And sometimes, a massive burp or fart is the only thing standing between you and a peaceful evening.

Do I've to wear proper workout gear?
Absolutely not. The mums in my class ranged from wearing pristine athleisure to wearing the same stained jogging bottoms they slept in. I wore jeans and immediately regretted it because I had to sit cross-legged for forty minutes. Wear whatever allows you to easily wipe spit-up off your shoulder.

What if my baby just screams the whole time?
Then you'll fit right in. There's a silent, unspoken solidarity in these rooms. When your kid loses the plot, the other parents just give you that tired, knowing nod. Nobody expects your ten-week-old to achieve inner peace; we're all just trying to get out of the house so we don't stare at the same four walls all day.