Affiliate Disclosure
Canadian Mom Recommends is 100% reader-supported, which means I may receive a commission if you make a purchase using my affiliate links, at no extra cost to you! This helps me to put food on the table for my 3 little snack monsters by doing what I love, helping out parents by recommending products I know and trust! As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
This blog post is for all my fellow twin mamas or soon-to-be twin mamas. My twin boys are nearing the 1.5 year mark and I am now at the point that I am looking back at the whirlwind that was the first year of their life and thinking about how we did it. When I found out I was pregnant with twins, first I had to get over the shock and then I started researching and reading because that is what helped put my racing mind at ease. So I hope this does the same for you! As I think about the first year of twin life, here is what I would like to share.
First quick piece of advice, keep a log (on paper or an app) for the first couple of months to help keep track of dirty diapers and feedings. If you try to keep track of all of this in your head, it just becomes a jumbled mess, I suggest writing it down. If you keep a paper log on the fridge or somewhere central in the house then everyone can add to it, because it will be a team effort.
I was so lucky to have been able to nurse my twin boys for just shy of 11 months. I did also nurse my daughter for 10 months and I do believe that having the experience of learning how to nurse a singleton helped me be prepared for nursing 2 babies at one time, what we in the twin world call tandem feeding. If you are planning on nursing your twins please just go into it with an open mind and just do the best you can, you never know what will happen until you try. I was hoping to be able to nurse my twins for at least 3 months and I was so lucky to nurse them for close to a year. You will most likely have to nurse your twins separately at first, since the babies need to figure out how to nurse individually and this may take some time. Once you feel like your twins are latching well and you are able to keep them in position safely and effectively then that’s when you will be ready to try out tandem nursing. I nursed using the football hold because I found it the most comfortable, especially when tandem nursing. I used the Twin Z nursing pillow and it literally went everywhere with me for 10 months, I absolutely loved it and found it very helpful. Learn more about other twin products I found helpful in my Twin Must-Haves blog post!
So yes, I did nurse my boys for close to a year but I also did introduce bottles within the first couple of months because it was so important for me to know they would take a bottle in case we ended up needing to use formula. Once you have established nursing after a month or so, then I would highly recommend pumping a bit so you can also give your twins a bottle once a day or so, this will help ensure they will be able to both nurse and bottle feed seamlessly. If you wait too long, introducing a bottle can become difficult because after the 3 or 4 month mark babies start to lose the sucking reflex and won’t take to a new nipple as easily if they have only nursed up until that point. As I mention in my Twin Must-Haves blog post, I used the Medela electric plug-in pump because I already had it from when I had my daughter but if I had to redo my pumping for the twins, I would have purchased a portable pump since it is tricky to be plugged in to a wall trying to pump while also caring for twin babies.
The last quick tip for nursing twin mamas, be prepared to be hungry all the time! Keep high-protein snacks in stock! When you are nursing twins, you are burning so many calories nourishing 2 babies. Make sure you nourish yourself too!
In the same vein as introducing bottles, I would also suggest using soothers for the newborn stage. Again, once nursing is established, then try introducing soothers. The reason I recommend soothers is because when caring for two babies at the same time, there will be times that you are attending to one baby and the other is crying while waiting their turn for a bath, a bum change, nursing, a bottle, a cuddle, etc. If you have introduced soothers then this is such a great strategy to use to help comfort the baby who is having to wait a few minutes until you can get to them. My daughter became an expert soother replacer, there were countless times when I would be with one baby and the other would be crying in their swing and I would ask my daughter to go put their soother back in to help calm them down. But! Here is the catch-22 with soothers, I would recommend weaning the soother around the 3-4 month mark because if they have been relying on soothers while sleeping, this is when it can become tricky since they are losing the sucking reflex around this time, then their soothers fall out more during the deep sleep phase and they will wake and need you to replace it. Once this starts happening, that means it is time to get rid of the soothers, because it becomes a sleep crutch rather than helpful. We used the MAM brand for all 3 of our babies and they worked well for all of them. If your baby isn’t taking the soother at first, try gently tapping it when placing it in their mouth to help them activate the sucking reflex.
Okay okay, enough about nursing, bottles, and soothers. The next big piece of advice, maybe the biggest piece of advice, is to get your babies on the same schedule! This means when one baby feeds, so does the other, when one baby sleeps, so does the other, when one baby wakes up, so does the other. Yes, at first this may mean you are having to wake a baby if one twin wakes up before the other twin but in the end, it is worth it. Especially once your twins are starting to get a schedule established for naps, you want those naps to be happening at the same time so you have a chance to rest yourself!
Speaking of resting when you have the chance, I used Owlet Socks with all of my babies and I loved them. You use the Owlet Socks when your babies are sleeping, to monitor their heart rate and oxygen levels. The sock will alert you if there are any issues. When you are a mother to twins, you need to be able to sleep when your babies are sleeping and knowing their heart rates and oxygen levels were being monitored allowed me to sleep peacefully when they were sleeping.
We ended up hiring a sleep coach when our twins were 10 months old, I wrote about this in my blog post, Teaching Your Little One To Sleep. Sleep is so SO important for everyone, if your twins are struggling with sleep, please don’t try to wait it out because you could experience serious sleep deprivation with being up all night with twins. Please read my blog post about sleep and take action for everyone’s sanity.
As I near the end of this blog post, I want to write this part so carefully and with so much kindness in my heart. It may take time to bond with each twin individually, and that’s okay. I struggled with this and it made me so sad if one day I would feel more bonded with one of my boys, but then it would switch back and forth and this happened for a little while. What I realized during that part of my twin mom journey is, it makes sense when you think about it. As a mom to twins, you are literally having to divide your attention between two babies and you are in survival mode for a lot of that first year. Of course it is going to take time to bond individually with each twin, you can’t just dote and cuddle fully the way you do when you have a singleton. When I had my daughter, my first born, all I did was dote and cuddle with her because all I had was time and she always had my undivided attention. That is just not the case with having twins. I struggled with accepting this but once I understood my new role as a twin mama and once I wasn’t just solely in survival mode then the bonding started happening more naturally.
This is a great time to talk about accepting help from others. Obviously getting help from others makes sense on so many levels but one reason you may not realize right away is, having others around to help you, will allow you to have that individual bonding time with each baby, which is so important. I absolutely loved the days when there was another adult in the house helping out with the twins, and I could take the boys up to my room, one at a time, and nurse them separately. It gave me that individual connection time with each twin which I needed, and they needed.
Alright, last piece of twin mama information I want to quickly say, the first year of being a twin mom is very physically demanding, especially the first 6 months. You are constantly moving, helping one baby and then the other, over and over. On those days when you are utterly physically exhausted, please remind yourself that it will get easier. Once your babies start to move on their own and can crawl to the toys they want and start exploring their world (your house), that’s when the physical demand starts to lessen. Like I said, my boys are almost a year and half now and yes my days are definitely still physical but nothing like they were a year ago. My boys can now climb the stairs themselves (I no longer have to take 2 separate trips up and down carrying a baby each time), they run and play and entertain themselves, and they sleep through the night most nights. It does get easier, please remind yourself of that during those long hard days and nights.
I hope this blog post was helpful and finds its way to any twin mama who is wondering how they are going to do it. I see you, I was you. You can do it and you will be an incredible twin mama. I truly believe the saying, “You were made to be a twin mama”, because you were, your twins picked you to be their Mama because you are amazing and so capable even when you think you aren’t, you are. Welcome to the Twin Mama club, it is such a special place. You got this.
