If parents feel overwhelmed by the nappy changing, bottle washing and playtime scheduling that one child demands, spare a thought for those with twins, triplets or more. All of the above tasks are multiplied for these brave and tireless souls.
Tess Lyons understands that. The first few years were a blur for Lyons after her triplets Jasper, Sela and Cary were born seven years ago. But that was not only because the logistics of cleaning and feeding were multiplied.
Lyons had more serious problems. The children arrived 14 weeks early and doctors gave them only a one-in-three chance of survival. So Lyons and her husband Charles Caldwell spent most of those early days watching their babies battle a deadly fungal infection, heart problems, a brain haemorrhage and pneumonia.
'We felt most vulnerable when the triplets were first born. They were so small, they were so sick, we couldn't hold them. We couldn't do anything except pray for them,' says Lyons, who also has an older son, nine-year-old Sebastian.
Now that her children are a little older, Lyons, who ran a custom scrapbook business before turning to writing, says parenting triplets involves controlling a different sort of chaos. 'Instead of organising feeding times and nap times, it is keeping track of library books, playdates and which day what child needs to bring their swim costume to school,' she says.
Multiple births are increasing around the world and Hong Kong is no exception. According to the Health Department, twin births have increased by 70 per cent in the city since 1996, with 1,100 pairs of twins born here in 2009. The number of triplets more than doubled - from 18 sets in 2002 to 44 in 2007. There were even four cases of quadruplets or more born in 2007 and none in the five previous years. In part, doctors reckon the increase in multiple births is due to women having children when they are older, and the use of fertility pills and assisted reproduction procedures like in vitro fertilisation.
But the idealised image of identical siblings gurgling contently together in a pram is far from the truth. Twins often have radically different personalities, despite having the same DNA. They will fight bitterly to maintain their independence.