Introduction

I am not an expert on twins, but since a person's chances of having twins quadruples after you have had one set of fraternal twins, I thought I would record the tips that have worked for us so I can remember them in the future if I ever need them again :)

Essential Purchases for Twins

1. Bouncy seats- we used these A LOT during the first three months. The babies loved being bounced and for a while, the only way they wanted to take naps was in these seats. I would never have been able to get any dishes done or any dinner made if I hadn’t been able to strap one baby to my chest in a carrier and bounce the other baby with my foot in their bouncy seat.

2. Swings- These are wonderful. You will probably want two. We love having one of the Fisher Price swings that swings front to back AND can switch to swinging side to side because one twin only wanted to be swung one direction while the other only wanted to be swung the other.

3. Snap’n go double stroller. We looked at LOTS of strollers and finally decided on the Snap’n Go double stroller by Baby Trend. I love it because it is super light, and easy for me to use by myself on errands (I go somewhere every day). I also love the big wheels and really like how easy it is to push this stroller up hills (It’s so light I can even run it up hills).

4. Baby Carriers. Our babies get really cranky at night and what has helped my husband and I to maintain our sanity and have some nice couple’s time, is that we take our babies on a walk every night. We each strap a baby to our chests (my mother-in-law made ours… but you can buy lots of different kinds at the store) and we go exploring for 40 minutes or so. Our babies love it. Even now, if they are cranky, all I have to do is pull the carriers out and they will stop crying and just hold their breath in excited anticipation.

 

5. Breastmilk Freezer Storage Bags.

Post Pregnancy Survival

1. Buy an electric double breast pump (if you plan on breastfeeding)! It has given my husband and I so much more freedom than we would have without it. I feed my babies tandem-style which is more than a little difficult to do discreetly in public. So instead, I pump every night before I go to bed (I’ve been doing this every night since the babies were 3 months old and started going to sleep at around 7 pm). When my husband and I want to go hiking or on an excursion that will take a few hours, we just grab a bag of milk and feed the babies bottles. We use the Ameda Purely Yours pump and it has been perfect. Plus, it matches all of the breast-pumping supplies the hospital gave to us after the babies were born.

2. If you plan on breastfeeding, learn how to tandem feed. I would go nuts without this time-saver. It was too frustrating to do during the first four weeks, because the babies had such a hard time staying awake through feedings and I had a hard time holding both babies in place AND  trying to keep them awake. But spending a month with another baby screaming who didn’t like waiting for their turn while the other one ate encouraged me to keep trying to make it work. I didn’t really like the special nursing pillow for twins. I thought they were awkward and hard to get comfortable in. Instead, I sit on my couch an  place regular pillows on each side of me. Then I place a nursing pillow on top of those and use a blanket to help keep the babies’ heads in place on top of that. This has been so nice. One- I can pretty much nurse hands-free and two- during the night I can just lean back and sleep while the babies eat :)

3. Introduce the bottle to your babies as soon as you can. If your twins are like mine, they preferred breastfeeding so I didn’t have to worry about them rejecting me, but having them learn how to eat from a bottle has given us so much freedom. We’ve used them since they were only days old.

4. Get your babies on the same schedule as soon as you can. For the first couple weeks, it just meant feeding them at the same time, but as they have gotten older, we have helped them to also nap at the same time. We used the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child as our guide. (Don’t buy the Twins version of the book- I bought that too but it wasn’t very helpful at all). When one baby wakes up during the night to eat, we wake the other one up too.

5. Don’t stress too much about crying. At first I tried to soothe the babies so they wouldn’t cry at all. After all, I wanted to be a good mom, and I was trying to make up for all the tears they shed at the NICU. But this turned into nights where I would spend all night either soothing or feeding babies and wouldn’t get to sleep until even 6 am. After a few weeks of this, I let the babies cry a little bit when I put them back down after nightly feedings and was surprised to find they only cried for a little bit before they went to sleep. Now they don’t even cry at all!

6. Set low expectations for your day :). My cousin had twins a few years ago and this was her advice to me. It’s been really helpful. As long as you don’t expect to have a perfect dinner made or have the house clean every day, you will be a lot happier when it isn’t!

Surviving Pregnancy

1. Invest in the Prenatal Cradle. (It’s a harness that supports the weight of your belly) It’s worth every dollar of the 50 bucks I had to spend to buy it. It saved my back and I think it kept my huge uterus from getting too strained because it offered so much support. Wear it every day as soon as you have a belly!

2. At 28 weeks you need to start slowing down the pace of your life! At 32 weeks, put yourself on bedrest if you haven’t already been ordered there by your doctor. I’ve talked to lots of moms of twins and we all agreed that at 32 weeks we all of a sudden felt so much more tired and it was really easy to start going into preterm labor. You do NOT want to have your babies early… even if you feel miserable (I felt like a beached whale every morning and an old lady by the end of the day) having your babies in the NICU is stressful and not fun at all. I cried every time I went and visited my boys because I hated seeing them suffer. So stay pregnant and have healthy babies! (Plus, the longer you stay pregnant, hopefully the bigger the babies will be which will mean you are that much closer to have them be able to sleep through the night!).

3. Sit as much as you can. Even in the weeks that you feel great. If I was doing something that I would normally just stand to do (like doing dishes, or reading to my class, I would sit on my stool instead).

4. Peanut butter saved my life. I was sick A LOT and the only way I survived teaching school was to keep a jar of peanut butter on my desk. When I would get overcome with nausea, I would take a spoon and grab a spoonful and just suck on it. Kind of gross, but the protein helped me feel better.

5. Read When You’re expecting Twins, Triplets, or Quads by Barbara Luke and Tamara Eberlein. I read and re-read this book several times during my pregnancy.  One of my doctors treated my pregnancy pretty casually so I had to rely a lot on this book to teach me what to do and what things I should ask for in my prenatal care. I really would have been clueless without it.

6. Buy an exercise ball. By the end of the pregnancy, my hips hurt sooooo bad. They hurt the worst at night when I had to sleep on my side and I often couldn’t sleep. When this would happen, I would get out of bed and stretch out my hips a little by bouncing on my exercise ball. It felt so nice. Plus, then we already had the bouncy ball ready for when we brought our babies home and it worked great because we would sit on it while holding the babies and bounce the babies to sleep.

7. Body pillows help after you’re 16 weeks along and have to sleep on your side.

8. Carnation Breakfast Drinks helped my nausea. My morning sickness lasted the whole pregnancy. But with the help of prescription Zofran, and drinking a Carnation Breakfast Drink every morning before I got out of bed and every night before I went to bed, I felt a lot better and was able to function and teach third grade until my 32^nd week. The cheapest place to buy these drink mixes is at Costco. There, you can get 30 packets for almost $10 as opposed to what it costs to get 10 packets for almost $5 at Walmart.