Comments on: Responding to "we're having twins!"

By: luvmygirls

luvmygirls — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:19:13 +0000

Simple but true. I’m a newbie here. I have identical twin girls. We also have a three year old. Here’s my advice (I was on hospital bed rest for 2 months).
If you land on bed rest……

Schedule the days you’ll see your family because if your husband was like mine he will feel terribly guilty and kill himself trying to be at your side 24/7. Not fun for a three year old. We scheduled 3x’s a week. Wow, did I look forward to those visits but in between…

When people said what can I do? Ask them to commit to a day to visit you. I loved hanging out with my friends for hours like we were 16 again (now 33).

Eat, watch junk TV (guilt free) and keep a journal.

Be friendly to the nurses because trust me you get more flies with honey.

Tour the NICU! It is allot easier to see other people children in their before seeing your own newborns. Stop thinking this won’t happen to me, it probably will and you’ll be great! Sadia, I love # 2. By the way preschool rocks!

By: Bridget

Bridget — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:21:00 +0000

1. If you want to breastfeed, read up on breastfeeding twins before they are born. A critical mistake I made was not to push the hospital to help me begin pumping almost immediately, so it took forever for my milk to come in (and I never made enough for 2 babies). Meanwhile, I had no idea my babies weren’t getting enough and they continued to drop weight in the hospital. Luckily they were big to begin with (7 lbs 0 oz and 6 lbs 0 oz) so everything ended up OK, but make sure you find a good lactation consultant BEFORE they’re born to help you through breastfeeding twins.
2. Borrow, borrow, borrow! I bought the twin nursing pillow that everyone recommends but never figured out how to breastfeed 2 at once, so it was a waste of $50, and a woman with twins around the corner gave me hers after I’d already bought mine (and once you’re on bed rest or the babies are here you won’t have time to return stuff!).
3. GET HELP! Our twins are our first, so I can only imagine that having a toddler makes it even more of a challenge, and consider that you may have to have a c-section. I was not alone with my babies for the first 6 weeks. We had a night nurse for 6 nights a week, plus my mother would come over in the morning and then my mother in law would help in the afternoons. We had friends bringing us dinners 3 nights/week for 2 months. I realize not everyone has the same resources, but get what help you can. The money we spent on a night nurse was worth every penny – and I truly believe my babies are good sleepers (hoping I’m not jinxing myself here) because we had a night nurse. It allows you to be consistent with how you respond to them and how you begin to sleep train them.

By: Liza

Liza — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:47:49 +0000

I agree totally with all of Allison’s points.

Regarding family – if you have them over to help, remember that many of us will also have to endure all of their (certainly well-meaning) advice at times, which, coupled with lack of sleep and hormones, I found overwhelming at times. Our twins are our firstborns and sometimes my husband and I just needed to figure things out on our own instead of being told what to do at every turn.

But we still needed the help! If you can afford paid help for at least the first 2 months even for a few hours during the days (so you can rest) I would go for it.

I would add – a double snap and go (we used ours for the first 5 months, then it got too heavy to manouever), and a side by side stroller with nice thick tires for long walks over any surface. Just load the babies up and it’s just you and them in the nice fresh air between feedings…love it!

By: lara

lara — Sun, 03 May 2009 13:15:51 +0000

i got so many negative, horror stories when i was pregnant, then a colleague at work who has twins said to me;

be positive and determined that you can do it!
you can have a ‘normal’ delivery
you will learn how to carry 2 babies at once
you can breastfeed 2 babies

she was like a breath of fresh air and in the early days i thought about her advice a lot. so please take her advice!

my advice is;

drink plenty of water
get dh to make you a peanut butter,banana and icecream smoothie for breakfast (that was the reason i got out of bed!)
do some kind of relaxation class before. i did hypnobirthing and it gave me a confidence and a focus to prepare for labour and to care for 2 newborns afterwards. id say any kind of relaxation class could do a similar job.

By: swtbreyer

swtbreyer — Fri, 01 May 2009 20:29:22 +0000

I didn’t have any thing close to a schedule until after 2 months. Both my boys weighed about 10 pounds then. That is about when they can start going 4 or 5 hours through the night. Until then you pretty much have to feed on demand. For us that was sometimes every hour and a half, but sometimes only one baby at a time. I would sometimes wake the other baby up to eat, but not always… especially in the middle of the night. I would feed number one and get him back to sleep and look down at number two who was sleeping peacefully and choose to grab a hour of sleep for myslef instead of waking number two to eat. For me it wasnt always best to feed them at the same time everytime. One could go longer than the other. And if I had to wake them up they would be too tired to eat so it was a waste of time anyway.

And there is a growth spurt around two weeks that really makes it tough. But,I promise it gets easier. I’m still nursing both of mine (4 months old) and I would think it is about the same level of difficulty as nursing one baby. They eat 6 times a day, starting at 5 am, every three hours. They know the schedule better than I do!

By: Jenna

Jenna — Fri, 01 May 2009 03:45:10 +0000

What great advice! My twin girls are 3 months old and I have 2.5 year son. Here’s my suggestions:

1. Read Dr. Luke’s book, as others have suggested.

2. If you have an older sibling, plan for him or her. We had him pick out gifts for the baby and they “brought” gifts for him. He got a big brother t-shirt to wear when they were born. We made sure there was someone around to help out with him and now he goes to the day home 2 days a week. As someone else mentioned, I can handle 2 babies OR an active toddler, but not both at the same time.

3. Get helpers for the first 6 weeks, at least. If you have a c-section, that’s how long it takes before you are supposed to lift anything heavier than your baby. That means no carrying laundry, no lifting car seats, no carrying toddlers, no pushing strollers, etc. This was really hard, but it was good advice.

4. Let people know how they can help, ask for help and accept it. If someone comes to visit ask them to fold laundry, or play with your toddler, or change diapers. Anything to give you a little break. The most helpful people were the ones who knew what was needed before they came. One day a friend called to say she’d made soup and she was bringing me lunch. That was so much easier than having someone say “what can I do?”

5. Get out of the house! It might be hard, but you’ll have to do it eventually. It took 2 months before I was ready to take the twins and toddler out by myself, but it was a really important step. It would have been easy to just stay inside, especially since it was cold and snowy, but I didn’t want to risk getting in to that routine.

6. Make sure dad gets a chance to look after the babies. I know lots of moms who take on all the baby care responsibilities and the dads never get a chance to help. They unintentionally keep the dads from learning how to look after their children, and then the moms never feel they can leave their little ones at home. If you can do it, your partner can learn to do it too, if you just give him a chance.

By: Emily

Emily — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:36:57 +0000

New mom question: How do you get them to stay on the same schedule? We brought the girls home from the hospital on an eat every 3 hour schedule, but Thalia is hungry every 2 hours (or more) lately. Calli eats every 3 still, but Thalia is making it hard to keep a schedule going. They’re only two weeks old and we’re not sure how to deal with this.

There is no MOTs club that I can get to around here. They’re all over an hour away and meet on schoolnights. Teaching doesn’t leave me with much time for that.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:35:39 +0000

Well said, Alli! My girls are 7 months now and when we are out I can hardly figure out how to feed them both bottles. I think it is WAY easier and faster to latch them for 10 minutes and be done. Hooray!

By: Alli

Alli — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:37:24 +0000

If at all possible, try to breastfeed. Aside from all the other reasons why breastfeeding is a good choice, I found it to be so much easier to nurse two babies at once than to give them both bottles at once. It’s also a great way to save money!

By: Allison

Allison — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:55:33 +0000

1) Take it easy – a twin pregnancy is not the same as a singleton pregnancy. Lay down. Let people run errands for you. Let people cook dinner for you. Let people do WHATEVER they are willing to do to make things easier for you.

2) When they are born, be mentally prepared to put the twins on a schedule immediately. Feeding on demand with twins is a really good way to drive yourself crazy immediately. Having a schedule from the get-go makes everything that follows (sleep training, for example) that much easier.

3) Take it easy on yourself – no one is going to judge you over some dust, dirty dishes and laundry. Eat what YOU want to eat and do what YOU want to do when YOU want to do it.

I suffered a lot through the first month or two with my boys because I had a lot of family around – granted they were trying to be helpful – telling me what to do. It wasn’t until they left and I was alone with my boys that I found my rhythm with them.

And we were just fine.