By Melissa Grant
Little cousins Cooper Bickel and Xavier Midgley often get mistaken for twins when they are out together in public.
It’s an easy assumption to make given they are often in a double pram, are close in age and both have blond hair and blue eyes.
However, it’s somewhat strange and slightly amusing given the boys’ mothers are identical twin sisters.
Despite describing themselves as “pretty identical”, Lauren Bickel and Katrina Midgley (née Heywood) never thought they would be giving birth to boys nine weeks apart.
The twins – who grew up in Garfield and had to wear different styles of earrings to high school so people could tell them apart – both say no planning was involved.
“It wasn’t planned we just fluked it,” Lauren said.
Katrina added: “You couldn’t have planned it. It’s just so cool how they’ve each got a little buddy for life.”
Lauren fell pregnant first, which came as a surprise to some of their family.
“I told mum and dad when we were at breakfast before the footy,” Lauren recalled.
“Dad kind of knew because he saw my husband Shane and I in the car park. He asked how we were going and we smirked at each other. Mum dropped her fork in shock.”
At the time, Katrina was hoping she and husband Graham would soon be expecting.
“Lauren had said she was pregnant and that was nice. I was thinking I wanted to get pregnant soon,” she said.
But when Katrina actually fell pregnant it came as a surprise, with the couple preparing to jet off to the US. They ended up visiting various cities, including New York and Las Vegas, 10 weeks into the pregnancy.
Like her twin, Katrina decided to find out the gender of her baby at the 20-week scan.
“They said ‘congratulations it’s a girl … oh wait, no it’s not he just moved his legs’,” Katrina said.
The fact Katrina was too expecting a boy came as a bit of a shock given the twins come from a family of all girls (they also have a younger sister Amy).
But despite being twins and expecting the same gender, Lauren and Katrina had very different pregnancies and births.
“We both had similar morning sickness although she had it a bit worse,” Lauren recalled.
“I had it just in the evenings and she had it all day for a few days.”
Lauren had a relatively trouble-free pregnancy and a quick birth. Her waters burst spontaneously at night, with Cooper making a speedy arrival at Ferntree Gully’s Angliss Hospital
on March 18, 2017.
“I think it was five hours and Cooper was here,” she said.
Katrina, however, was well over her due date when she delivered Xavier at Heidelberg’s Mercy Hospital for Women on May 19, 2017.
“I was two weeks overdue and induced – he just didn’t want to come out!” she said.
Katrina said it was helpful being able to turn to Lauren for advice not only during the pregnancy but after giving birth.
“I had massive feeding issues whereas Lauren breezed through breastfeeding with Cooper,” she said.
“It was helpful being able to ask her for advice.”
Cooper, now aged 2, and Xavier, 22 months, have become extremely close.
“They are just best friends,” Lauren said.
“Cooper gets excited every time we see Xavier. I think Xavier was the first name he knew apart from mum and dad.”
Katrina, who often has both boys on a Thursday, says the boys have a ball together and constantly turn heads when they are out and about.
“Everywhere we go, no matter what, you get stopped and people say ‘aren’t they gorgeous’,” Katrina said.
“They assume they’re twins. At first I would say ‘no they’re cousins’ but now I’ve stopped correcting them.”
For their Nanna Jeanette – the girls’ mother – having two grandchildren so close in age and looks is a bit of a time warp.
“If Katrina is working on a Thursday I have both of them so it’s like having twins again!”
