When a baby comes along it can rule the roost. When they are a newborn/infant, your schedule basically revolves around when they eat and sleep. I have been asked by many people, “How do you do it?” or they simply say “I don’t know how you do it!” It’s simple, we just do…just like Nike. We have no other choice, they are our babies and we will do anything for them.
When we found out we were having twins, we knew it was going to take a lot of work and there would be challenges along the way. Little did we know we would be completely and utterly drained! But more on that later.
I’ve read a lot of books like Baby Wise, Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Baby, etc. While they all have good advise, I didn’t agree 100% with one specific method, but a little of each one. I liked the schedule of eating from Baby Wise, but I liked the sleep methods from Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Baby.
So to answer the question a lot of people ask, this is how we “do it” or manage with twins. It won’t work for everyone and I’m not saying this is the only way to do it but it’s what works for us.
SCHEDULE!
This is the biggest key to keeping your sanity with multiples. There are two different approaches when it comes to feeding your baby, Parent Directed Feeding (PDF) or Demand Feeding. What’s the difference? With demand feeding, you feed the baby whenever he/she is hungry. This means they could eat every 1.5 hours if they want, or go 4 hours if they want. They could eat 1 ounce at one feeding and then 4 ounces at the next. There simply is no consistency. With PDF the parent sets when the baby will eat. Baby Wise puts it like this…”Both the variable of hunger cues and the constant of time guide parents at each feeding. The parents’ role is that of mediating between both the cue and the clock…using parental assessment to decide when to feed based on actual need”
With PDF you encourage full feedings to help prevent inconsistent and overly frequent feedings. You feed baby when baby is hungry, but you evaluate the situation if baby is hungry much sooner than usual (is baby in a growth spurt? was the previous feeding not a full feeding?). You also wake up baby when it has been so many hours since his last feeding (anywhere from 2-4 hours). This helps to reduce the risk of not feeding a sickly or extremely tired baby enough, and it also helps organize baby’s night and days to encourage better night time sleep. In the end, baby ends up getting just as much milk during a 24 hours period as a “demand fed” baby, but it is simply redistributed to less, but full, feedings.
Our babies came home from the hospital on a 3 hour feeding schedule but was able to move to a 4 hour schedule at their 2 week check up since they had surpassed their birth weight. We always check with our pediatrician before doing anything to their feeding schedule to ensure proper weight gain.
If you know me, you probably know that I like a structured schedule. I like to know what’s next or what to expect. But at the same time I’m flexible and can adjust it whenever needed, I’m not strict when it comes to this schedule.
We chose to do the PDF which will keep the boys on a schedule. We decided to keep the babies on a structured routine which includes flexible scheduled feedings. This means we have the boys on a schedule of eating at 5:00am, 9:00am, 1:00pm, 5:00am, and 9:00pm but we adjust it if necessary. If one of the boys is fussy or acting hungry (during a growth spurt this is going to happen) we will feed them early. We have fed them 2 hours after a feeding before. If we do this, we just go ahead and feed them again at their next scheduled feeding (even if it is in 2 hours). They may not eat the whole amount they normally eat but they will be back on schedule.
The book Baby Wise states that “How you choose to feed your baby will have a profound effect on your child’s hunger patterns, sleep patterns, and basic disposition.” I totally agree with this.
The biggest reason to have a good feeding schedule is because our basic goal is to have our babies well rested and develop good sleeping habits as they get older. To do this you need to have an established feeding schedule. Newborns really have no sleep schedule, they sleep whenever they want all throughout the day. Their nervous systems aren’t developed enough to have a set schedule until around 6-8 weeks or sometimes longer. Since ours were early, it will probably be around 10-12 weeks. Since our babies are still only 7 weeks (adjusted age of 4 weeks) We will soon try to work on a sleep schedule and hopefully start to develop good sleep habits. But of course, we will check with our pediatrician before we try to exclude any nighttime feedings in order to get a better sleep schedule.
Other than a feeding and sleeping schedule, there are many other ways to keep your sanity — or lose it — when parenting multiples.
You suddenly can’t just pick up and go at a moments notice. There is definitely no going anywhere at a moments notice with a baby, much less TWO. It now takes us at least 15 minutes to gather everything, put two babies in their car seats and put them and all their stuff in the car, before going anywhere. This hasn’t stopped us from going places, it just unfortunately slows us down ;). We’ve known people that just stopped going places when they had a baby because either they just didn’t want to deal with all that or well, they just didn’t want to deal with all that. And, that’s not a bad thing, it’s just not us.
We don’t want a baby (or babies) to run our lives, yeah they may eat at a certain time but we prepare for it. If we are out at 1:00 when they are scheduled to eat, we’ll feed them wherever we are…if we are going to a place that we know won’t be conducive to feeding a baby we won’t go at that particular time. We have gone to a doctors appointment an hour earlier than scheduled before just so we can feed them there and keep them on their same eating schedule. You can’t (or I can’t) stay locked up in your house because you don’t want to throw your baby off their schedule. You’d go crazy!
Another really big key to how we manage is that my husband and I work as a team. I am fortunate enough that my husband is willing and able to help out whenever I need him to. When we are both home, we each take a baby and feed them so it doesn’t take as long. We divide up the night time feedings so neither of us are completely sleep deprived.
Yes, we are sleep deprived, just not as much as we would be if I were doing all the night time feedings or if he were.
We also rely on family. Our parents (mainly moms) have been wonderful and kept the babies if and when we needed them to. There have been many occasions that we needed to run an errand that would be very difficult to take the babies along and they watched them for us. Tonight they are each going to take a baby for us for the entire night so we can get some much needed sleep. We can’t tell you how much we appreciate this and how much we need it! Jonathan’s sister has also offered to watch them while we just go eat and get away for a few hours…that was great to be able to do.
Those are the biggest factors in keeping us sane and how we manage with twins as we go through the newborn stage.
I’ll admit, we don’t have it all together, there’s still lots to learn and we don’t get through the day 100% frustration free, and there are definitely those points during the day that I’m sure we both want to just give up. But we don’t because we love our boys and want the best for them!
