NICOLE GIAMUNDO AND JORDON SMITH WELCOMED THEIR IDENTICAL TWIN GIRLS ADALYNN AND NORA IN JANUARY 2014
Nicole Giamundo and her husband Jordon Smith stood in the hospital room, cradling their newborn identical twin girls, when suddenly fear kicked in: They couldn’t remember which twin was which.
Just two days prior, in January 2014, the couple welcomed their girls Adalynn and Nora.
In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, the mom shares how she and Smith were sleep-deprived and, despite attempting to dress one daughter in purple and the other in pink, their exhaustion made it difficult to tell the twins apart.
“We couldn’t recall which bassinet we had taken them from, and that was our way of keeping track of them,” Giamundo tells PEOPLE about the mixup. “I immediately panicked, realizing how unprepared we truly were to have twins.”
Giamundo says the girls also wore hospital bracelets, but they didn’t specify the names of their twins.
To this day, the couple aren’t entirely certain if they mixed up their daughters at the hospital, but because they are identical, it will forever remain a mystery.
“This is something we are asked about all the time,” Giamundo says. “The number one question we get when people find out we have twins is if we have mixed them up.”
Recently, Giamundo filmed a viral TikTok – which has garnered 7.2 million views – where she shared more about the mixup, including her daughters’ “hilarious” reactions to the news.
“I did not expect them to have those reactions,” Giamundo says. “They both were glad they weren’t the other which made my heart happy because that means they love who they are, and that’s the most important thing to me as a mom.”
She emphasizes, “I want them to love who they are, I want them to not wish they were someone else. So when I recorded those videos and their reactions were, albeit funny, they gave me some peace of mind that they are who they were meant to be and they love who they are, mixed up or not.”
Since sharing her family’s experience, Giamundo says she’s formed a community on TikTok of parents going through similar situations.
“The number of people who have gone through the same thing with their twins, or twins who now question if they were mixed up, was fun to read and interact with,” she says.
The girls are now 10 and although it’s been a decade of the couple learning ways to tell them apart, Giamundo admits it can still be tricky to distinguish between the two.
“Nora used to have a little red dot on her nose when she was younger, and that was how their teachers told them apart. As she got older, that went away,” Giamundo explains. “They have slightly different voices, so when they talk, I can tell them apart. But there are more times than not I have to really look at them.”
She continues, “They have even switched classrooms at school and tricked their teachers. Adalynn is now taller than Nora, so when they are next to each other, it’s much easier to tell them apart.”
