Jan Morland spent her 80th birthday in Portland, Oregon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve only got my mother\u2019s word for this, but the sister in the theatre opted in as godmother and we were even given death names – Bridget and Patricia.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pair were eventually taken to Karitane Hospital, wrapped in rolls of cotton wool and put in a rudimentary incubator, \u201cbasically, a hot water bottle wrapped in a blanket\u201d, Jackson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNowadays, there are tubes and things for your breathing but we didn\u2019t have any of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was \u2018Get on with it or don\u2019t\u2019. Obviously, we got on with it. We came home after about six months.\u201d<\/p>\n
From a young age, she and her sister were completely different, Morland said.<\/p>\n
Morland, who lives in Auckland, celebrated her 80th birthday with family in Portland, Oregon, while Jackson had a party at home in Whanganui.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t even look like twins, we\u2019re not identical whatsoever, but we do look out for one another.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we were babies, I was the chubby one with curly hair, and she was the skinny one with straight hair.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate to say it, but nowadays, it\u2019s the other way around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jackson said her mother told her there was a daily newspaper report about the \u201cmiracle babies\u201d.<\/p>\n
Twins Janis Morland and Jenny Jackson (pictured) are turning 80. They were among the smallest babies ever born in NZ up to 1946 and were expected to live for only a few hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur names were changed after we got home – Janice Margaret after my mother, and Jennifer Elizabeth after her only sister.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be honest, I would have preferred to keep Bridget.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she was always in trouble in their youth.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got belted one day for throwing mud pies on to the back of the house. I remember it vividly. <\/p>\n
\u201cJan was there, saying \u2018It was her, it was her\u2019. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe always wore pink and white, and I always wore green and blue because it didn\u2019t show the dirt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jackson, who has eight grandchildren, ran Simply Flowers in Whanganui with husband Charles Jackson handling the books, before retiring to Jane Winstone Village.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur one claim to fame was 10 minutes on telly for the Maggie Barry show,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the time, we had a big garden that was open to the public. It was called Ohorere.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did a lot of weddings. It was great but it was bloody hard work.\u201d <\/p>\n
Twins Jenny (left) and Jan each weighed 2lb when they were born.<\/p>\n
Charles Jackson said he had heard a story about the twins\u2019 shared bedroom being divided in two with a length of tape.<\/p>\n
\u201cJan\u2019s side was neat and tidy, and you couldn\u2019t see the carpet on Jen\u2019s side,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt might sound strange but I think it\u2019s fairly common for twins to be completely different.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jenny Jackson said she had been a gardener all her life, and Jan had been a top sportswoman. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve always been opposites and it\u2019s too late to change now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morland retired aged 75 after working in the travel, insurance and property industries.<\/p>\n
\u201cI come over [to the United States] as much as I can to be with my daughter and I can see my grandsons as well,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey are the light of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she and her sister \u201cgot off to a shaky start\u201d in life \u201cbut we turned out okay\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe must have been really determined or our mum was really determined to make sure we saw it through.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mike Tweed is a multimedia journalist at the Whanganui Chronicle. Since starting in March 2020, he has dabbled in everything from sport to music. At present his focus is local government, primarily Whanganui District Council.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan Morland spent her 80th birthday in Portland, Oregon. \u201cI\u2019ve only got my mother\u2019s word for this, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[180292,135829,806,22059,6325,177,28726,30641,39164,33321,180293,117,111,43,139,69,6029,223,1850,3608,80],"class_list":["post-336569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-180292","tag-80th","tag-as","tag-babies","tag-birthday","tag-celebrate","tag-hailed","tag-jackson","tag-jenny","tag-miracle","tag-morland","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-once","tag-the","tag-twins","tag-were","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}