Managing Your First Six Months with Twins

Are you wondering what your life would be like after having your twins? Here are tips, advice and tricks that can help you navigate the new journey easier.

When you get pregnant with twins, you can be sure that your parenting journey will significantly differ from singleton mothers. When your twins arrive, you might have zero clue concerning what to do, and you might get overwhelmed.

However, you need not worry because the following tips will help you to prepare and manage your recovery and health while taking care of your twins:

1. Prepare

You might become relatively inactive during your last month of pregnancy. Utilize this time to shop online, arrange your wardrobe, makeover the babies’ room and stock your freezer and other supplies.

If you have relatives and friends willing to help with household duties, give them an opportunity. Tell them to plan a menu for you to avoid repeating one recipe daily.

2. Get Enough Sleep

Sleep is essential for you and your babies. However, most mothers do laundry and other household chores when the babies are napping. Nevertheless, when you have to choose between sleeping and cleaning, you should decide to sleep. Try to rest whenever you get a chance. Although sleep deprivation and exhaustion will occur at some time, getting enough sleep will help you recover quickly.

3. Restrict Visitors

While everyone around you gets excited about the newborns, remember the journey has exhausted you. Thus, you do not have to let everyone know when you deliver to ensure you limit the number of people who visit to check on you and your twins. Those people ready to help should be the only visitors you allow. The rest should wait until you’re comfortable and ready.

4. Stick to a Schedule

Always keep your twins on a schedule. For example, if one wakes up, then wake up the other; if one feeds, feed the other. Also, change them when they wake up from a nap rather than before they sleep. While you will be overwhelmed during the first six months, sticking to a routine will help you maintain your sanity.

5. Bathe Your Twins Individually

Bathe your small babies independently. Bathe one while the other lies next to you or hangs near you in a rocker seat. When done with bathing the first, switch. Once your babies manage to sit down on their own (at about six months), buy bath seats that will enable you to clean your twins simultaneously.

6. Prepare Bottles In Advance

Always have your bottles ready before the babies wake up. Babies get hungry quickly, and thus, they need to find something to feed on once they wake up.

7. Ask for help

Taking care of twins is an overwhelming task. The sleepless days and nights go hand in hand and may exhaust you. Thus, get relief from someone who can keep an eye on your babies for a few hours while you get some sleep.

8. Simplify Feeding Time

Managing two hungry babies is stressful. Thus, do whatever it takes to feed them simultaneously, without considering whether you bottle-feed or breastfeed (or in combination) them. This skill will help you maintain your sanity.

9. Track Everything

Keeping track of everything that happens to your newborns will help you cope better. When starting out, track who gets fed last and the quantity of feed given, how many poops each makes per day, who remains behind in naps. While it might become challenging to keep such records, you can start writing them down to ensure you do not forget or mix them up.

10. Have Your Meals

Ensure you take your meals whenever someone makes or brings you food. Eating will help you regain your strength and produce enough breast milk for your babies. On the same note, do not strain to make dinner every night. Go out and grab some feed or ask someone to buy you some.

11. Unwind

You can go outside with your babies, whether it’s a walk around the neighborhood or visiting a zoo. Besides, you can take a walk alone in the evening, take a bath, or watch a movie as you feed your newborns. These activities will improve your mental and overall well-being.

Although raising two babies at the same time can become overwhelming, you will get used to your new life as each day passes by. The multiples will reach stages that will ease your life, like sleeping throughout the night or feeding themselves. It becomes more comfortable after the first six months, so relax!