Once I found out I was having twins, I started planning immediately. However, no one I knew had twins. Luckily, my friend Michelle is a former nanny to twins and a baby whisperer in general. I felt well-prepared both before and after the babies were born. She was instrumental in giving us a good start as a family, and I will be forever grateful. Almost everything here I learned from her, and I have shared her name and wisdom with many people I know. While I don't have anywhere near the knowledge of Michelle, I figured I'd write some thoughts down for the future when friends of mine have twins. I can just send them the link! :) (And then still give them Michelle's info! I wish more people would enlist her help!) I also thought it would be interesting to look back at the blog years from now and remember what got me through the first few years with these crazy little guys I was blessed with!
1. Start preparing early. When you're expecting two, you don't know how early they might come. My motto throughout my pregnancy was "Hope for the best, plan for the worst." Then, when the "worst" happened to me (complete hospital bed rest at 26 weeks), I was ready. We had the cribs set up. We had bathing supplies, diapers, a changing table, clothes, and car seats (installed--don't put off that important step!). There is just no time to thing about acquiring these things if you are recovering from birth and bringing two babies home right away or facing a good chunk of time going back and forth to the NICU.
2. Sometimes, it's better to spend more money to get a product you'll truly love and that will last, rather than settling on something cheap and having to re-buy later. My friend Michelle really pushed investing in a nice stroller so that I wouldn't feel trapped or housebound. In fact, she recommended two strollers. To date, she's never led me astray--she was completely right. We bought a Britax stroller that held two infant car seats and, later, two toddler seats. It's sturdy, has large and rugged wheels, and keeps the boys separated which is important now that they like to hit and touch each other and steal each other's toys when they are side by side. We also bought a Maclaren double umbrella stroller that is wide enough to hold the two boys side by side, but still narrow enough to fit through a doorway. It's relatively lightweight and has been a godsend for drop off and pick up at the daycare. I'm glad we invested in high-quality, well-designed strollers because I'm an active person would have gone crazy if I felt like I couldn't get out and about easily because of the size, weight, or poor design of my stroller. (This was especially important when we lived on the second floor in the condo in Watertown!)
3. Do only selective reading. There's just so much that can go wrong when you're carrying multiples. I read books about twins only selectively. I mostly read books written for women pregnant with just one baby. I still was able to read about complications that can happen (pre-eclampsia, for example) without feeling like these conditions were inevitable because I was having twins. I figured I didn't want to scare myself or expect that the worse would happen. I also told myself that if something bad happened, I'd end up in the hospital with doctors I trusted and they would teach me and fill me in on the details I needed to know. I took one course about twins at Isis Parenting around 20 weeks and it was scary and depressing, and that was enough to convince me that my approach was correct, at least in my particular case. Semi-ignorance was bliss for me!
4. Start saving as soon as you get the good news. And I mean as soon as you find out you're having twins. If you're planning on being a working mother, see if you can live off just one salary and save 100% of the other salary. That way, if one of you ends up staying home to take care of the babies, you know you are capable of living off one salary and you have some money saved up as a cushion. If you can't live off one salary, than you know that one person staying home isn't an option. But at least you'll hopefully have some money saved up to help with start-up expenses (daycare deposit, baby items, formula, a mini-van now that your family is larger, or whatever else you might need). You could also start a college fund (MEFA here in Massachusetts has the UFund 529 managed by Fidelity) and begin to funnel money away while you still have some! This is also a good time to get your finances under control, cut unnecessary spending (Get rid of cable? You won't have time for it anyway!), or work overtime or two jobs to save as much as you can before your free time is limited by wanting to spend time with your new babies!
5. Find childcare you trust. Lock it in. And then devise a back-up plan. Daycare wait lists can be over a year long. When you're looking for two spots, the waits can be even longer and more complicated. If you are looking to hire a nanny, you don't want to wait until the last minute to be doing interviews, background checks, and going through an agency or trying to figure out how to pay the nanny correctly (assuming you're not paying under the table...). Once you've secured your childcare, you still will want to come up with some sort of back up plan, especially if your opting for daycare. Your twins will be sick all the time... The first year will be brutal because when one gets sick, inevitably the other one will too, at least to some degree. Sometimes if you're lucky (depending on how you look at it), they both get sick at once and you can take days off from work to be with them and they hopefully will get better at the same time. But when one gets sick and then the other one, you could be looking at more than a week of sick time you need to take off from work. This is where having family members in the pipeline could be super useful. There is also something called Parents in a Pinch in the Boston area that is useful for back up, in-home childcare. The prices are outrageous, but some employers (like Harvard) will cover the registration fee and the subsequent nanny fees are cheaper.
6. Stick to a schedule. Live and breathe by it. Don't change it, don't let anyone challenge it--at least for the first 6 months or so. I was so strict about the schedule it was laughable. I wouldn't feed my boys at 10:50 if they were due to eat at 11. The schedule worked like a charm for them, and I didn't really end up having to push them much at all to stick with the schedule. But I hated to budge on the schedule even ten minutes because by the end of the day, with 4 feedings, that could add up to a very big shift in the schedule if I fed early every time. Once I got them on that strict schedule, we all knew what to expect. They were used to eating every four hours, and it actually made it easier to break/adapt the schedule later. If there isn't any schedule to begin with, things can get out of control very quickly. The schedule kept us all sane. It allowed for happy, healthy babies, because everyone in the family always knew when they'd sleep and eat next.
7. Let some things go. You just won't have time to keep a perfectly clean house, watch all your old TV shows, or read in peace whenever you feel like it. Another thing you may have to let go of as a mother of twins is breast feeding. You will feel guilty and like a bad mother at times, but your sanity and well-being is much more important to your twins in the long run than providing them with breast milk. There are so many things that make breast feeding potentially challenging. First off, the fact that you have to produce enough milk for two babies. In my case, I didn't have an issue with that at first, but as soon as one baby came home from the NICU and the other stayed behind, it became harder and harder to breast feed both and pump and keep the milk supply up with all the trips back and forth to the NICU. Then, once both boys were home, it's tough to learn to latch both babies at the same time. Adrian had reflux, and that further complicated things because we were worried about him gaining weight. Without bottle feeding, it was so hard to know how much he was actually eating. Eventually, I turned to a routine of breast feeding, then supplementing with breast milk in a bottle, and then pumping. It felt like as soon as I finished each of these things it was time to feed again, especially when I was doing all this in the middle of the night. I decided to let the actual breast feeding go and continue to pump and bottle feed. That worked well for a while, except for the fact that I simply couldn't find the time to pump enough to keep the supply up once I was alone with the boys all day. I didn't have enough 15-20 minute periods throughout the day to pump--it was easy when they were napping, but not so much when they were awake. Finally, to keep us all sane, well-rested, and well-fed, we switched over to all formula. I felt proud that I had given them only breast milk for the first 2 months and mainly breast milk with a little formula for the 3rd month. After that, it became more and more formula and less and less breast milk, but we all became more and more sane. There will be trade offs when you have twins. Don't beat yourself up about it. Do what you can under your individual conditions.
8. Don't compare yourself to a mom of a singleton. For same reasons mentioned in #7 about letting some things go, conditions will simply be different for you than many other moms. It will be harder to watch both babies once they become mobile and fold laundry at the same time. The logistics of two are simply more complicated, require more organization, and more emphasis on a schedule and consistency. If you want both babies to sleep and eat at the same time, you have to work hard to get them to sleep and eat at the same time. You can't just feed both on demand unless you never want to stop feeding, burping, and changing diapers. Going out in public with infants will be harder. It seems incredibly daunting at first to run errands with two infants that need to be loaded and unloaded into the car and stroller every single time you need to make a stop and get out of the car. You won't have much peace and quiet. On the flip side, having twins will afford you many advantages. Your kids will always have a playmate. They will learn how to interact with another child from early on. They will get into ore trouble than you thought possible, but their creativity will amaze you!
9. Take a shower every day. No matter how busy you are or how long the day seemed, taking the time to relax--even for just five minutes--is important. Taking a shower to feel clean and rejuvenated is a great way to wind down. So, even if the babies are cranky, colicky, and crying, leave them with your spouse and jump in the shower. You deserve it.
10. Thou shalt love thy NICU nurses. If you are able to avoid the NICU, congratulations, but in my case, I wasn't so lucky. That said, the NICU was one of the best experiences I've had in my life. Sure, I wish my boys had been born full term and that we'd avoided all the scares and stresses of my water breaking at 26 weeks and the six weeks of bed rest that followed. And I can say I loved the NICU experience because things with my boys turned out so well. I suppose I would not be so positive if things had not gone as well as they did. But the fact is, no matter what issues your babies have, if they are in the NICU, you had better like your nurses. Love and spoil them. Sing their praises to their faces and to anyone who will listen. Bring them treats and gifts, and shower them with hugs and as much attention as they can stand and still do their job. They will have your babies in their hands, taking care of the fragile creatures day and night. They will insert and remove IVs, administer medications, and feed and cuddle your babies. They will know your own children better than the doctors and, sadly, even better than you as parents (at least for a little while). I love my NICU nurses so much that it surprises me to this day the bond and attachment I feel to them. I thought it would fade, but if anything my love and appreciation for them grows stronger with time. Granted, we were lucky enough to have not only two of the best and most experienced NICU nurses at the hospital, but also two of the most fun and interesting ladies I've ever met. So that could have made a difference too! But either way, your NICU nurses will be an incredible wealth of information and training. Take advantage of it. It's scary bringing a preemie or a baby with complications home, but not so much when you allow the experts around you to teach you what they know about your babies.
11. Get used clothes. Just think about it: you'll need a lot of clothes. Babies grow so fast! They change sizes every few months until they hit around size 18 months and it finally slows down a bit (as least it did for us). You'll need a ton of sleep sacks, burp cloths, bibs, onsies, PJs, socks...it makes sense to get some of this new, so why not at least get their clothes used? You can find some awesome stuff at consignment stores and, my favorite: Savers. It's so cheap that you can afford to buy only the good quality, name brand stuff and avoid the cheaper-quality stuff. Why not get a nice quality Baby Gap shirt for cheaper than a Target brand one? I have found that once infants become toddlers, quality clothes in good shape are harder to come by than for infants, but I still have bought almost nothing at all new for the boys (except for socks).
12. Sleep train. Do it as soon as your pediatrician allows. Buy Ferber's book and read it. Study it. Then read it and study it again. And then do it. Follow it like it's law. Be tough when your kid cries but you know there is nothing wrong. Be diligent about checking on your child according to Ferber's suggested schedules. It all works. More than anything else I did, this saved the quality of our life. It assured we have well-rested babies and, as a result, those babies have two (relatively) well-rested parents. If you have a well-established bed-time routine and have taught your babies to soothe themselves, it won't be so bad. If you are trying to rock two babies to sleep because they can't self-soothe, you are going to drive yourself crazy.
13. Have a snarky answer ready for the inevitable fertility question, because whether you went through treatments or not, you WILL be asked this question.
14. Take advantage of resources available to you. Many twins will be preemies and, therefore, will qualify for Early Intervention services. It's currently *free* in Massachusetts. If the babies qualify, a speech terapist, nurse, or someone else who is highly trained will visit your kids at home or daycare to "play" with them, monitor progress, and offer suggestions of activies to do. The services are offered up to age three and kids are re-evaluated every year to see whether or not they still qualify for services. On a similar note, many preemie babies will qualify for a few visits from a visiting nurse. The nurse will come once or twice a week at the beginning between visits to the pediatrician to make sure the babies are gaining weight, feeding ok, etc. If you have preemies who spend time in the NICU, your insurance may also cover a high-quality breast pump and maybe even formula. Formula for twins can be around $300/month, so it's well worth seeing if insurance will cover it!
15. Know the basics. Often, if your babies spend time in the NICU, they will offer free classes such as infant CPR and first aid, SIDS awareness, breastfeeding, etc. After learning from Michelle and spending so much time in the NICU, I felt very prepared and knowledgeable about safety issues for infants. For example, it's amazing to me how few people seem to know that these days experts recommend putting NOTHING in the crib with the baby. Babies should be swaddled tightly and placed to sleep on their back. The use of a fan in the nursery has been shown to reduce the risk of SIDS, as does the use of a pacifier. As for car seats, rear-facing until two years old--or longer if possible! Want sources? Here are three reliable ones!
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/health/policy/22carseat.html?_r=0
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/babies-kids/baby-toddler/convertible-car-seats/rear-facing-longer-is-better/convertible-car-seats-rear-facing.htm
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/03/21/car.seat.guidelines.parenting/index.html
One last basic tip? Know that it doesn't matter how tight you put on a diaper! Only pulling out the flaps around the leg will keep the diaper from leaking! You'll change a lot of diapers as a mother of twins, but fewer if you learn this tip sooner rather than later (especially if you have teeny-tiny preemies!).
Good luck!!! :)
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