As the shrieking starts again, I can't help asking: how did we get into this? “Shrieking hell,” says my wife, half asleep. It's 4.15am and we're holding each other in bed, trying to pretend the shrieking isn't happening. But, when it sounds like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park, the attempt is futile. We know we're going to have to get up again, to tend the baby raptors.

The only choice is between the wrench of getting up straight away and staying in bed for a few minutes longer and putting up with the twins' shrieks. And, to be honest, a few minutes count these days. Nowadays, we spoon sleep - like sugar - in tablespoons of five minutes each. If sugary sleep could fall on the floor, we'd lick it up: it's mine, no, it's mine.

Whose turn is it to get up this time? It's yours. No, it's yours (or, if we're trying not to fall out, it's mine. No, it's mine). We stay locked together in bed, wondering which of the twins is shrieking this time. This is one of the “blessings” of twins, says my wife: one spends half the night shrieking for God-knows-what and then the other one takes up the baton and starts conducting her own atonal cacophony. “For Christ's sake,” sighs my wife, “which twin unit is malfunctioning this time? Is it Twin Unit 1 or Twin Unit 2, or both?” “I don't know,” I yawn, drifting off to sleep...

...and we see ourselves staggering out of bed, over to the Moses baskets, peering to see which it is. It turns out to be both: the two of them have now woken up and are shrieking the shrieks of the damned.

One of us picks up Twin Unit 1, the other wanders downstairs to prepare the milk. In the bedroom, an epic unfolds on the changing mat: place baby on mat, undo poppers on sleepsuit and pull above waist, fold used nappy under baby, clean baby's bottom with cotton balls and warm water, scrabble in box for new nappy, hear bottom explosion too late, find projectile poo all over baby and own pyjamas, clean up baby and pyjamas, put new nappy on now-hysterical baby, pull on clean sleepsuit, baby sick (because so upset) all over clean vest and sleepsuit...and on and on, until an Everest of dirty clothes, wipes and cotton-wool balls falls on baby and we have to start all over again. Finally, Twin Unit 1 is ready and is taken to the bed, where she will have 4am supper. Other baby - who is now rocking her own Moses basket with rage - is taken out, and the changing-mat epic starts again. Parental Unit 1 sits on bed feeding Twin Unit 1 to the sounds of Radio 2, but Twin Unit 1, previously so desperate for milk, can now suck at the rate of only 1ml per half-hour, and time and milk stand still...and Radio 2 seems more and more distant...and regular news slots come and go...and our eyes and the world start shutting.

Suddenly we wake up, wondering why we're lying down, why there are no babies in our hands, whether we've dropped them and are crushing them to death underneath us, why there are still raptor shrieks coming from the other side of the room - and we realise with horror that we dreamt everything. We dreamt preparing the milks, changing the babies, feeding them and we'll now have to go through it all over again in tired reality. For Christ's sake, pleads my wife.

Many may dream of having twins, but in this, a painful moment of sleep-starved desperation, we guiltily wonder why we had babies in the first place. We could have carried on a life of going out after 6pm, drinking cocktails, eating curries, talking to each other about grown-up matters.Instead, our night-life now revolves around milks. Tonight we first fed the twins at 9.30, which was also when the night started to go wrong. Suffering from “reflux”, Twin Unit 1 wouldn't stop howling after her evening feed. Eventually, I agreed to take Twin Unit 1 downstairs, where she gobbled another 50ml of milk, was quiet for half an hour while I watched ancient episodes of Dallas on cable - and then vomited over the sofa to the closing theme tune. I found an episode of the original Star Trek and, while Captain Kirk was duelling Roman gladiators and snogging alien blondes, baby sicked over clothes. More feeds, more howling, more vomit, in a compulsive cycle I couldn't break out of. In the end, Twin Unit 1 and I dozed off on the sofa. I awoke half an hour later to watch an old episode of The Two Ronnies.

By the end of The Two Ronnies, mother, father and twins were (incredibly) back upstairs asleep. It was 4am, the bed was warm, the babies were quiet, and all was well with the world. Fifteen minutes later and the world has gone bad again, full of wailing and the gnashing of gums. “For Christ's sake, Miranda, Rosalind, go to sleep. Go to sleep, go to sleep, gotosleepgotosleepgotosleepgotosleep, for f***'s sake.”

“Don't use bad language at my children,” my wife says.

“Sorry,” I say.

“It's not their fault,” she says.

“Sorry,” I say. Of course not sleeping isn't their fault. Rosalind doesn't lie there, whispering conspiratorially to Miranda: how shall we drive them crazy now? How can we work as a team to wreak most havoc, to whiten father's hair, blacken mother's eyes?

Yet this is the paranoia of twins - that they seem to conspire to overthrow sleep and decent language. My wife and I have often fantasised that this is the case, in our besieged bunker under the duvet. But the babies don't deserve to be sworn at. So I say sorry. Miranda still looks wide-eyed and shocked. I feel terrible. “I'm sorry,” I say again. But I can't take back the words and both babies seem strangely subdued for a few minutes. When I return to the bed, the duvet is no longer a bunker, and my wife lies apart. Before, it had been us and them. Now, because of what I've said, it's no longer that simple and alliances are being redrawn.

“I'm sorry,” I say.

“Your poor daughter,” my wife says.

“I'm sorry,” I say once more.

“We'll forgive you,” says my wife. “We” is no longer my wife and I - it is my wife and her daughters - and I know that I am now the enemy, and it is three against one. I feel a bit lonely. Loneliness can't last, though, when, just a quarter of an hour later, there are more shrieks from the Moses baskets. I get up, tiptoe across the room and try to rock Twin Unit 1 to sleep.

“We do love you,” I whisper into the basket. Twin Unit 1 isn't pacified and the shrieks get louder and louder.

Sleep seems a vanishing horizon.

“For f***'s sake,” says my half-asleep wife from the bed.

Jonathan Taylor is senior lecturer in creative writing at De Montfort University, Leicester and the author of the memoir Take Me Home: Parkinson's, My Father, Myself (Granta Books, 2007)

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