#Twinning: 'Can my fur babies really co-exist with my human babies?'

Every morning I wake up with a black Labrador staring me in the face. Sometimes he’s foisting a rubber bone at me, other times it’s a tennis ball.

But no matter the prop, at 7am on the dot he shows up, his tail wagging so ferociously his whole back end wags with it. 

When I pretend I’m still asleep, he will usually turn his attention to wrestling the ginger Cavoodle stealing the warmth from my feet. 

These guys are what some people refer to as our “fur babies”. I hate the term but I’ve got to admit... they are kind of like my children. My heavily-furred children.

The problem is, I’m expecting two human children to start screaming the house down in about five weeks time. And when they do, what on earth do I do with the heavily-furred children who once took priority? 

Since being on leave the past couple of months and waiting this painful pregnancy out, the heavily-furred children — Baxter the ginger Cavoodle and Austin the black Labrador — have become mildly obsessed with me. They follow me everywhere.

In part, it’s good training for the arrival of the tiny humans, given I don’t even get to shower alone. The furry ones are always there: staring for longer than is comfortable, presenting tennis balls at inappropriate times, and turning their heads on adorable angles when I converse with them. 

I’m in a real dilemma. I LOVE these guys. 

Austin was once a federal police explosives dog who we rescued from injury. He arrived in our home only to have his keen explosives nose lead him to every one of my pot plants and have him dig the fertiliser out of them.

He left tidy piles of dirt next to each pot and sat in the middle of it all wagging his tail. He thought he’d done his job and wanted to be rewarded. How could I stay mad at that? 

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And Baxter? He arrived when I was in the depths of grief over losing my sister. He was the tail-wagging, face-licking burst of unconditional love I really needed, and still do, really. 

So my point is: how do people make the heavily-furred children happily coexist with the human ones?

I shudder at the thought of them feeling excluded or suddenly “less important”.

Pretty soon, gone will be the days where they could dive onto our bed in a fit of excitement or literally grab my hand with their paw and demand to be scratched. There’ll likely be a baby or two in my arms, taking up my time and my patience.

I really don’t want the furry ones to become resentful of the human ones.

I can’t even imagine them being locked outside, committed to a carefree past chapter of our lives where hounds ruled and slobber-covered rubber bones were seen as a funny part of the furniture, rather than a germ-ridden hazard that must be swept up and thrown outside. 

How do other families do it? How do you harmonise the relationship between the young human and the heavily furred one?