Any twin mama knows that the newborn stage can be a tricky one. After navigating delivery and surviving the newborn twin stage twice, there are a few thing that I have learned to be true.
Find a pediatrician you love and get on a first name basis. Shop around if you have to in order to find a pediatrician you feel comfortable with. You will spend enough money there to fund their kids to got to college so you might as well like and trust them.
Build routines but be flexible within them. During the newborn stage, you will wonder if you will ever get back to a sense of normal. We re-established normal by slowly building routines and structures back into our day. Over time, we developed a sleep schedule, feeding schedule and overall flow of our day. You will fall into a routine that works best for you and your babies. When we created a more predictable environment we actually found it to be easier to step out of our routine when we needed to.
Whatever is said between you and your partner at 4am doesn't count. Sleep deprivation doesn't doesn't bring the best out of anyone. Don't take it personally. You're both not pleased about being awake in the middle of the night. It's not worth the fight. Sleep and smile when you can.
Rely on your village. Don't have one? Then build one. You will need help no matter how amazing of a parent you are. Sometimes you will need an extra set of arms, a sounding board or someone to rotate your laundry (thanks Mom).
Trust you gut. If something doesn't feel right, it probably isn't. When starting our first set of twins in daycare, we slowly started to feel like something just wasn't right and it wasn't the best fit for our boys. There wasn't one thing in particular that was wrong. It was just a gut feeling. We switched to a new center and when we dropped them off, felt immediate relief. Our kids have grown, learned and developed so much since being there and love the days when they get to go to "school."
You don't need two of everything. Except high chairs, car seats and cribs. We definitely needed two of those. We were able to rotate most toys and other baby products. Also our twins didn't always like the same thing. What one liked, the other one didn't. We have one of about every baby product made to man. It's a true trial and error process.
Get a Costco membership. Also, skip the shopping cart and go straight for the flatbed. Those diapers, wipes and boxes of emotional support chocolate take up a lot of space.
Hormones are a wild ride. Have people checking in and advocating for you. Twin pregnancy with twice the fun but is also twice the hormones. The highs are super high but the lows can be tricky. After delivering your twins, do the best you can to monitor for emotions. With our first set of twins, I felt short fused and had higher anxiety. I chalked this up as part of learning how to navigate life with two newborns. My preconceived notion of postpartum depression didn't fit what I thought I was going through. Once our oldest set were about 8 months, it felt as if a veil was being lifted and I was getting back to being "myself." It wasn't until then that I realized that what I was feeling was the result of postpartum depression. Recognizing this helped me to know what to look for when we had our second set of twins.
You will feel like a circus side show every time you are in public. People will stare. People will comment. Accept it and embrace it. We even took it to the next level and bought ourselves a Kia Carnival so we can be a traveling circus. People are baffled by the number of small children that crawl out of our vehicle.
Raising twins is one of the most incredible experiences of your life! Yes, it is overwhelming. Yes, it is hard, but it is also amazing. Witnessing our babies grow and develop together is something that is beyond words. Currently, my favorite thing is watching our twins on the monitor interact and giggling with each other in bed when they should be sleeping. The bond they have and are building will last a lifetime. The best gift I have given them is each other.
Comments