We already have two kids, a three-and-a-half year old and and eighteen-monther. Both boys. Older kid is diabetic but is doing pretty well. We’re having twin (probably) girls in February/March, depending on medical stuff (blood pressure, tendency for twins to be early).
We’re looking into childcare, part-time, and I’ve got a few relatives volunteering a couple of weeks at a time, visiting and helping either during bedrest or after the birth.
Tell me what it’s like, anything possibly useful- pregnancy, birth, coping. I know what one’s like, I’m just a little worried about the avalanche of two newborns, plus doubling our number of kids.
And now I think I’ll go lie down on the couch and throw up for a while. Damn pregnancy nausea.
When my wife was pregnant, I always said that if we were having twins I’d have a tough time deciding which one to keep and which one to sell to the circus.
We didn’t have twins, so I just have a wish for good luck and no advice for you.
No experience with twins of my own, but please please please try to avoid the cutesy matching outfits I often see twins wearing. We will all thank you for it.
Congrats. I don’t have twins, but I do have quads and have survived so far (they’re 14), just take my advice and cut it half. Actually that’s probably a good idea normally:
When people come over to help, have them start with the older kids. They are the ones displaced in the family and they are going to need the extra attention. Plus if start with the older ones it’s a little easier when the guests fawn over the babies next.
Buy two of those We’ll be back at X:00 signs with the clock hands that move. Write their names on them. Hang them over their cribs. Change the hands when they eat (I always preferred what time they would be expected to get hungry next, but you could do what time they eat). That way at 2:00 in the morning it takes much less brain power to figure out if Juniourette could be hungry.
You can actually bottle feed two babies in your arms at once. After that you have to resort to the prop the bottle method. If you’re nursing I’m of no help to you at all there.
If you are bottle feeding do not think it would be a genius idea to use a stick mixer to mix the powdered formula up in gallon jugs at a time. Well actually the gallon jug was genius, the stick mixer prompted legendary bouts of burping and projectile vomiting.
If they look even a little alike paint the toe nails of one of them. And ALWAYS paint the nails of the same girl.
Right names down on the back (or in a caption for digital) pictures as soon as possible. I have dozens of pictures I’m not entirely sure which kid it is.
Now for the more general words. We had lots of help and it was still overwhelming, but it gets easier. You get a routine, they get a routine, they start doing things themselves. It’ll be waves of harder and easier for the first years, but the good news is you’ll probably be too tired to really remember.
You should know this now, but: no baby ever died from crying. If you just can’t handle it, put the kids somewhere safe, step out into the front porch, and decompress for 20 minutes.
Save time for your spouse, it’s easy to miss out on the reasons you two got married in the first place, make time for it.
Find your local Mothers of Multiples club, they have garage sales two or three times a year where buying two of everything is much easier.
Eta: if you’re feeding one, feed the other…changing one? Change the other. One sleepy? Put them both down. (not literally!)
Do not give the twins rhyming names. Please, for the love of God. Even if they are fraternal, people will get them confused. Making the names variations of each other will just heighten the confusion.
Wife made me memorize their ears before they left the hospital, then cut off their bracelets as soon as they got home to enforce it. No two people are TOTALLY identical, but 22 years later I’m still not convinced I didn’t mix them up one time while she was at work.
Seriously, think of them as two different people and you’ll do fine. You already know how newborns transform into people; these two will do the that eventually, just at the same. Sucks for you (double diapers, double car chairs, etc.), but you have to realize, from the very beginning, they are two different people.
They’re identical, and Mr. Lissar is having fits about being able to tell them apart. I told him we’d paint coloured dots on their foreheads.
I’m joining the parents of multiples group.
Paying attention to the older kids is very good advice. The babies don’t really notice much until they get out of the potted plant stage.
I’m going to try to breastfeed them both. I fully breastfed both my other kids (haven’t weaned the toddler yet, but we’re working on it)and while I’d like them to at least take bottles of pumped milk I’d rather not pay for formula.
Congratulations! You’re in almost exactly the same spot my mother was in. My brother was 17 months when my sister was born, then 16 months later a pair of identical twin girls. She said it was the happiest time of her life.
I would recommend making sure Gnat is toilet-trained before the babies are due. Diapering 4 kids is a lot.
Definitely not approved now, but back in the 70s my cousin Jaime had twins, took them to a buddy who was a tattoo artist and had a little dot tattooed on the back of the left ear for one, and the right ear for the other. Never got them mixed up after that.
[though personally I think that is actually a great idea. Hidden, but makes it easy to tell them apart. Also great in case they get stolen as an identifying ‘mark or scar’.]
Gnat is theoretically toilet trained, although in actuality he wets himself about four times a day, which is a pain. He doesn’t seem to care. I’m pondering incentives for staying dry and disincentives for wetting himself. It’s partly because of a combination of little boy who doesn’t want to stop and diabetes- trying to get a preschooler to go to the bathroom every ten minutes is difficult.
I’m not a twin, but a friend of mine is an identical triplet. Her parents color coded the three of them; she got the color blue. It might suck to have that much of a couple of colors in the closet, but maybe use color to tell them apart (at least for a bit)? One daughter could be yellow, the other pink (or whatever).
