Multiple births are births of more than one baby from a single pregnancy, and include twins, triplets and higher order multiples.
This section looks at mothers who have multiple births by maternal age, timing of first antenatal visit, onset of labour and method of birth. Topics for babies of multiple births are birthweight, gestational age, Apgar score at 5 minutes, admission to special care nurseries (SCN) or neonatal intensive care units (NICU) and length of hospital stay.
The number of multiple births in Australia each year is small, and has remained relatively stable at around 2-3% of all births (from 9,285 (3.1%) of births in 2009 to 8,915 (2.9%) of births in 2019).
In 2019, of this small proportion, almost all multiple births (98%) were twins, while the remaining 2% were other multiples (that is, triplets, quadruplets or higher).