by Jennifer Powers

Created on: March 09, 2009

I am the proud Mom of five-month-old identical twin boys, and have learned quite a bit during these early months to pass onto expectant MOMs (Mothers of Multiples). The biggest tip I can give to parents raising twins is to decide what type of parenting you would like to use as it will make all your decisions easier. If you believe in attachment parenting as I do, then this will help you with major decisions such as feeding and sleeping patterns. Decide if you want to breastfeed and seek help from lactation consultants in the hospital if need be.

My twins are on the same feeding schedule, but are fed individually because I found it challenging to tandem nurse. Due to their prematurity, they could not latch on properly so I had to use a nipple shield. This was not my breastfeeding plan, but I learned early on that I needed to adapt to accomodate the needs of my boys. They were on a two-hour feeding schedule to help them begin to distinguish night and day. We slowly stretched them to eat every three hours, and decided they would be on a Demand Feeding Schedule (when the baby appears hungry, you feed him). This does sometimes result in one getting an extra feeding or timing being off for the majority of the day to have them on seperate feeding schedules, but my babies do have individual feeding needs.

The biggest thing you can remember is that your babies are individuals. Just like I understood one might demand more feeding than the other, I also learned they each develops at his own pace. My younger one rolled over at three weeks of age and I began to put pressure on my older boy, which ended up frustrating him. He did roll over on his own a week later, but I could have avoided putting stress on him to develop at the same pace as his brother. I also use my boys' names as often as possible and try not to refer to them as "the twins." One will be put in the jumperoo while I read the other one a story, and then I switch babies. They enjoy their reading time, but also love jumping around in the jumperoo to burn off their extra energy. We had heard to introduce them to baths from the beginning so introduced their first bath about two days after we got out of the hospital.

Do know you will be sleep-deprived for the first few months of your twins' lives. One began to sleep through the night while the other continued to wake once or twice during the night for a feeding, and then the two would reverse roles for the next week. There is never a dull moment in our home and I feel they are the greatest gifts I will ever receive. Enjoy your time with them and don't get so bogged down with maintaining a schedule or ensuring they develop right on pace with other babies you may know. While my boys were five weeks premature, I didn't even bother to adjust their actual gestational age because they actually seemed to be ahead of what full-term babies do. But remember milestones are just guestimates of an average age so don't put so much stress on your twins if it's a week past the time they should have first smiled or rolled over. It will put too much pressure on all of you and you just need to enjoy every minute of them!

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