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  1. #21
    doberbrat is offline Diamond level (5000+ posts)
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    congratulations! I recognize your name as well. Never had twins but my belief is that God only sends them to very special moms so know that you'll be great.

    I might research stuff then put them in the saved section of my amazon cart. so you can have done the thinking/research part in advance and buy as needed so you're not overwhelmed with "stuff".

    Also, think about how people can help you. So when someone says "let me know if I can do anything" you can say, actually, I'd love xyz. And dont forget, your good friends wont mind loading the dishwasher or running the vaccume.

    or, even better, look into some cleaning help.
    dd1 10/05
    dd2 11/09
    and ... a mini poodle!

  2. #22
    mommyoftwo is offline Sapphire level (2000+ posts)
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    Quote Originally Posted by doberbrat View Post
    congratulations! I recognize your name as well. Never had twins but my belief is that God only sends them to very special moms so know that you'll be great.

    I might research stuff then put them in the saved section of my amazon cart. so you can have done the thinking/research part in advance and buy as needed so you're not overwhelmed with "stuff".

    Also, think about how people can help you. So when someone says "let me know if I can do anything" you can say, actually, I'd love xyz. And dont forget, your good friends wont mind loading the dishwasher or running the vaccume.

    or, even better, look into some cleaning help.
    I do have cleaning help three days a week. DH simply does not have any time to do more than the bare minimum because he is taking care of everything in addition to being a general surgeon and being on call 24/7 for two different hospitals, one 30 mins away. Thankfully the one in town is literally blocks away. Between soccer and gymnastics the girls have stuff he has to take them to 4 days a week. He simply isn't in the house long enough to do much. Plus I'm stuck upstairs which means the girls have free reign downstairs when they get home from school. They aren't trying to cause trouble but they have a terrible habit of just dropping things willy nilly and I'm not there to remind them they can't do that. I have a little more control over the upstairs because I can see it more easily. Once I can move around again I can better direct the cleaning lady because she was really thrown into this with very little direction but it's still much better than it was. It's not her fault that she doesn't know my routines or where I store certain things. At the moment there isn't much I can do about it because I'm not allowed to go up and down the stairs and if I walk around, I start having contractions.

    I did just order several things from amazon and my mom is coming this weekend to help me go through what we have and see what else we need. Sadly my BFF's father died yesterday so I'll be busy with funeral stuff this weekend but of course she is far more important than baby stuff right now. I recently got a large package of stuff from another preemie mom that had a bunch of sleepers and stuff as well as preemie cloth diapers so that helped a lot. I think we are getting there slowly and I'm feeling less panicked than I was.
    Jessica

    Mommy to:

    Amelia (11/21/03
    Linnea (9/1/05)
    Annaliese (12/21/12)
    Kirsten (12/21/12)

  3. #23
    gatorsmom is online now Pink Diamond level (15,000+ posts)
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    Congratulations! I remember that feeling of being overwhelmed when we first found out we were having twins. I posted about it like crazy here. And next month they'll be 5yo. We all survived! And you will too.

    I haven't read all the other responses so I'm not sure if these have been said. But if you plan to breast feed, I HIGHLY suggest a twin-sizes bfing pillow and nursing them tandomly. If not, you will spend all your time either nursing, burping, & diapering. Instead, if one gets hungry, offer the breast to both. It will save you some time.

    I also want to suggest you get a double snap and go. They really do make life easier for the first few months.

    I think the best advice I received was to lower my expectations for the first 6 months and accept all offers of help. Let well-meaning friends organize meals for you, fold a load of laundry, pick up some groceries for you, change some sheets, or babysit the twins while you get in a hour nap. And go easy on yourself. Eat off paper plates, order take-out a lot, have your DH take your laundry to a service that will wash and fold. The first 6 months are exhausting. Go easy on yourself.


    As for your pregnancy, I remember well a mom here offering some excellent advice. Drink an obscene amount of water. Your main goal now is to drink water and rest as much as possible to keep those babies in utero for as long as possible. The longer they stay in there, the healthier they will be.

    you sound like you are on the right track. You can do this.
    " I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent." Mahatma Gandhi

    "This is the ultimate weakness of violence: It multiplies evil and violence in the universe. It doesn't solve any problems." Martin Luther King, Jr.

  4. #24
    twowhat? is offline Red Diamond level (10,000+ posts)
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    Quote Originally Posted by gatorsmom View Post
    I haven't read all the other responses so I'm not sure if these have been said. But if you plan to breast feed, I HIGHLY suggest a twin-sizes bfing pillow and nursing them tandomly. If not, you will spend all your time either nursing, burping, & diapering. Instead, if one gets hungry, offer the breast to both. It will save you some time.
    And this totally applies if you bottle feed as well. I went so far as to ALWAYS wake a sleeping baby to nurse If one cried to eat, I'd wake the other and make them both eat. Waking the sleeping baby often took a solid 10 min. But I did it. Because the couple of times I tried to feed only one baby on demand, I paid dearly for it Get them on THE SAME schedule. It doesn't matter how you decide to schedule them (feeding every 2 hours on the dot, or whatever) - the important thing is to make sure it's the SAME for both babies. They will naturally then fall into the same rhythm and you'll be rewarded witih sleep, blessed sleep!

  5. #25
    mommyoftwo is offline Sapphire level (2000+ posts)
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    I was going to ask about the feeding. I kind of assumed that that was the way to go but it's nice to hear it from parents who've already been there. I would imagine that they sooner we get them on the same schedule the better off we will be. Did you nurse one after the other or both at the same time? Both at the same time sounds more time efficient but figuring out the logistics of getting them both on a breast at the same times sounds like it could be difficult. I suppose like with any baby, the longer you do it the easier it gets.

    I was also wondering about sleeping arrangements. Did you put both babies together for a while. If so, how long did you do that? I was thinking we would start that way but I'd love to hear what you did.
    Jessica

    Mommy to:

    Amelia (11/21/03
    Linnea (9/1/05)
    Annaliese (12/21/12)
    Kirsten (12/21/12)

  6. #26
    gatorsmom is online now Pink Diamond level (15,000+ posts)
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    Quote Originally Posted by mommyoftwo View Post
    I was going to ask about the feeding. I kind of assumed that that was the way to go but it's nice to hear it from parents who've already been there. I would imagine that they sooner we get them on the same schedule the better off we will be. Did you nurse one after the other or both at the same time? Both at the same time sounds more time efficient but figuring out the logistics of getting them both on a breast at the same times sounds like it could be difficult. I suppose like with any baby, the longer you do it the easier it gets.

    I was also wondering about sleeping arrangements. Did you put both babies together for a while. If so, how long did you do that? I was thinking we would start that way but I'd love to hear what you did.
    As for the feedings, I would strap my big, twin nursing pillow around my waist, pick up one baby and set it on the pillow under my arm, then pick up the other baby. Sometimes I did this in bed, but most of the time I'd sit against the sofa on our carpeted family room floor. Once both babies were on the pillow, I would latch on one baby and then latch on the other. It's a little tricky at first but it quickly becomes old hat. One of the benefits to bfing this way was that Greenbean would stimulate my milk flow with his strong suck. Sisi didn't have a strong suck but once my milk came in, she got what she needed because of Greenbean's efforts. If she had been a singleton, we would have had problems bfing her because she was just so weak in the month and just could not stimulate the milk flow like her brother.

    As for sleeping arrangements, at first I had them both swaddled and sleeping in the bassinet of our packnplay next to our bed. I couldn't do that for long, though, because the weight limit was like 15lbs and with the 2 of them they quickly outgrew that. For a while Dh slept in the guest room and i coslept with them onour king size bed. But that didnt last long because its really tricky cosleeping with twins. But then Greenbean's colic really flared up so at about 10 or 12 weeks they were sleeping in their Graco Sweetpeace swings. It was the only way Greenbean could sleep for months.

    Btw, I wholeheartedly agreed with everything Twowhat said about feeding. I nodded my head throughout her post. Always wake the babies to feed at the same time. Get them on the same schedule or you will never sleep. It is not mean (it might feel mean to wake a sweet, peacefully sleeping baby). It is about survival of mom and the babies.
    Last edited by gatorsmom; 10-06-2012 at 11:43 AM.
    " I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent." Mahatma Gandhi

    "This is the ultimate weakness of violence: It multiplies evil and violence in the universe. It doesn't solve any problems." Martin Luther King, Jr.

  7. #27
    Melaine is offline Blue Diamond level (20,000+ posts)
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  8. #28
    twowhat? is offline Red Diamond level (10,000+ posts)
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    We would sometimes strip the sleeping baby naked and tickle her to wake her. Yep - mean parents. But it meant sanity.

    I know it'd probably be harder since you have older kids to care for, but tandem BF is the way I'd go if you can manage it. Get a twin nursing pillow and line up help with the LCs at the hospital to teach you how. My LC made the difference between success and failure for me - she was the one that got both babies latched within an hour of their being born, and she came to my room every 2 hours during my entire 4-day stay at the hospital to help me latch, watch while I did it myself, etc. And I visited her a few more times after I went home too.

    The reason I say to tandem BF at first especially is because babies take SO LONG to nurse. If you feed one, and then the other right afterwards, you could be nursing for 2 hours STRAIGHT. So the extra hard work/effort in learning to feed both simultaneously really pays off. I had a BF station set up at home. A couch, an ottoman, a nursing stool, a side table with TV remote, snacks, tissues, lanolin, plenty of burp cloths. I spent many hours sitting there with 2 nursing babies, and then falling asleep there myself when they fell asleep (on the nursing pillow). We'd all just snooze together, LOL. And you'll need more than just a chair to nurse twins - a couch worked well because I could get one up on the pillow and latched while the other lay right by my opposite thigh, then it was easy to scoop up the other and get her latched. DH helped a lot with positioning at first, but I quickly got to where I was confident doing it myself.

    When the babies are older and become faster, more proficient eaters, then I could see maybe feeding one right after the other. But in all honesty - I fed mine simultaneously EVERY time (I can count on one hand I tried to feed one and not the other - and most of those times were in the middle of the night as I tried to figure out if twin A was ready to STTN). Even when they got older - I was always tandem BF. They often fell asleep at the end of a BF session, so feeding them at the same time maximized my chances that their sleep patter would fall into the same schedule.

    As for sleeping, we let ours sleep in the same bassinet in our room for the first 2 months, then moved them into separate pack n plays in our room when they outgrew the weight limit for the bassinet, then into their own room at 4-5 months in separate but adjacent cribs. At first they did seem to do better sleeping side by side. But I will admit that we allll slept better once we moved them into their own room to their own separate cribs
    Last edited by twowhat?; 10-06-2012 at 11:56 AM.

  9. #29
    twowhat? is offline Red Diamond level (10,000+ posts)
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    Quote Originally Posted by Melaine View Post
    ITA with waking and feeding. Always. For years. Well, still in fact.
    And

  10. #30
    gatorsmom is online now Pink Diamond level (15,000+ posts)
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    Quote Originally Posted by twowhat? View Post
    We would sometimes strip the sleeping baby naked and tickle her to wake her. Yep - mean parents. But it meant sanity.

    .
    I went as far as to strip them naked and if they still would not wake up (not uncommon for sleepy preemies), I'd use a wet wash cloth on them. I'd have to continue to do this once they latched on because they'd often fall asleep nursing after the first few sips and I wanted them to tank up. They were much more likely to sleep for a long time with a full belly. "Snacking" meant I never got to sleep. So keeping them awake for the full feeding was essential.
    " I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent." Mahatma Gandhi

    "This is the ultimate weakness of violence: It multiplies evil and violence in the universe. It doesn't solve any problems." Martin Luther King, Jr.

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