For Karen Rodger and her husband Colin, home is a busy place. The pair, who live in Renfrewshire, Scotland, are parents to six children, though they wouldn’t change their set-up for the world despite the endless piles of laundry and washing up.
“It’s a very odd feeling if I’m ever in the house by myself,” Karen confesses, revealing that she craves the busyness of family life. “People would think it must be amazing, but I don’t like it. It just feels a bit weird – no noise, stillness, the quietness. “If I don’t hear the rumble of the washing machine, I get anxious. We have a room dedicated to laundry and the industrial size washing machine is on all the time. It’s a busy household but it’s absolutely brilliant. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Karen always knew she wanted to be a mum, but tragically experienced a miscarriage shortly after she tied the knot. She recalls thinking, “This is never going to happen, I won’t get to be a mum.”
However, a couple of months later she discovered that she was pregnant. “I developed really bad morning sickness, which was horrendous. I was about seven weeks pregnant when I went for an early scan and I remember them saying, ‘Everything’s fine, there’s the heartbeat. In fact, there are two heartbeats because you’re having twins.’ I turned to Colin and I just couldn’t believe it, it was such a shock to the system. It was all very exciting though,” she says, reports the Mirror.
Since then, Karen went on to defy odds of around one in 88,000 to give birth to three sets of non-identical twins – sons Lewis and Kyle, now 26, Finn and Jude, 23, and daughters Rowan and Isla, 11.
Back in November 1998, Karen and her husband Colin first became parents to their boys, Lewis and Kyle. Just two years on, they welcomed another pair, Finn and Jude, turning their household into a bustling four under three abode.
Karen looks back with humour at those early days: “I had two double buggies in the back of the car, plus four car seats plus myself, so that was fun,” she quips. “We’d go for walks and we were just like a force of nature walking around. You just felt like you were taking over the pavements.”
After navigating the tricky toddler years, a voice told Karen that she wasn’t quite done with having children. Despite assurances to her husband Colin that more twins were unlikely, fate had a delightful shock in store – another pregnancy revealed that yes, twins were indeed part of their story again.
Karen attended her first scan alone as Colin had an important work meeting. “The woman scanning me was a friend of mine’s neighbour and I’d met her a few times, so she knew my situation,” Karen shares.
“She showed me the heartbeat but then she paused. I thought, ‘Don’t say it.’ And then I heard her say, ‘I can see another little heartbeat.’ I thought she was joking. All I kept thinking was, ‘How am I going to tell my husband?’
“When I got out I’d had a text from Colin asking if things were OK and I said everything was fine. As a joke he texted back, ”How many?’ I replied with, ‘Two…’ He excused himself from the meeting and called me and said, ‘You’re having a laugh!’ That was me, 41 and pregnant with my third set of twins.”
When Rowan and Isla were born, they seamlessly fit into the family. Having already upgraded their cars to accommodate her growing family, Karen admits that transitioning from four kids to six was easier than going from two to four – especially with her sons old enough to help out around the house.
“We had a Volkswagen Transporter anyway so we would have enough room if we were taking the boys out and they were with their friends,” Karen explains. “My husband drove that and I drove a people carrier, so it wasn’t so bad when the girls came along. It was more just fitting in the prams with the boys and their friends in the back. That was tricky.”
Devoted mum Karen adds: “I was breast-feeding too and wondered how they’d feel about that, but it just became normal. Even changing the girls’ nappies, they were so helpful. I couldn’t have done it without them.”
She’s always been hands-on with her kids, even as they’ve grown older, saying, “it goes from one extreme to another. One moment I’ll help out with an essay for uni and the next I’m baking cookies with the girls”.
Karen runs a tight ship at home to ensure everything goes smoothly, although she confesses things haven’t always gone smoothly. Recalling a particularly challenging supermarket trip, Karen says, “One time I was caught out when I went to the supermarket with the four boys. I had to take two trolleys and I put Finn and Jude in the seats and Lewis and Kyle in the other. I was having to push and pull two trolleys around Tesco. That got a few stares. I wasn’t even going in for that much. We’d run out of bread and milk, but I had to get two trolleys because it was easier to manoeuvre.”
To help their children express their individuality, Karen and her husband Colin made sure to “split themselves into pieces” to take them to different clubs and activities, and they were careful to dress their twins in distinct outfits.
“When the boys were younger, they all had different coloured iPods. Lewis’s was blue, Kyle’s was green, Finn’s was yellow and Jude’s was red. They were their colours. Their toothbrushes were that colour too, so were their school bags. If they had a shower and there was a yellow towel lying on the floor, I’d know who needed to pick it up,” she says.
With her brood still under her roof, Karen’s life is as bustling as ever, yet the family always finds time for group outings. She reveals that the sibling bond remains strong – at least most of the time.
As her sons grow into their twenties, Karen acknowledges the inevitable changes ahead, with discussions already taking place about the future. “Our friends keep asking us what we’ll do when they move away,” she shares. “We talk about downsizing but then I say, ‘Where are we going to put the grandchildren when they come?’ I reckon we’ll have grandchildren, so we might not downsize, we might just keep living in this big house.”