When I first found out I was having twins I was immediately excited. I’ll admit, there was a small part of me that actually wanted it to be twins. The idea just seemed so incredible.
I have never been one to worry about the “hows” in life. Just ask my husband. I’m a shoot first, ask questions later kind of gal. This has gotten us into trouble more than once. I only thought of how much fun twins would be. I didn’t give any though to how much of an impact having two babies at once might have on our lives.
Getting the news that we were expecting twins didn’t come as a total shock. We had gone through IVF, and at the recommendation of our doctors, we chose to implant two embryos. Still, it was more likely than not that one if not both of the embryos would not survive. With my history of miscarriage, I was praying that at least one embryo would be healthy and make it full term.
My husband didn’t share the same carefree attitude when it came to the news of twins.
I will never forget the look on my husband’s face when we got the news that we were having twins. If only I had a camera to capture that moment, I would have had a picture worthy of a thousand memes.
My husband was naturally nervous about the idea of twins. Wouldn’t any rational person be a bit worried? I probably should have been but I was just too excited. My husband was thinking of the extra cost, the extra work, the major life change we were about to go through. I was thinking of matching outfits and being a mom of three instead of two.
It took my husband quite awhile to come to terms with the idea. Me on the other hand, I felt we would figure it out when the time came just like we did with everything else. I really didn’t think that much about how hard it was going to be for all of us. I was more concerned with the possibility of pregnancy complications than with what came after.
My Twin Pregnancy Was the Easy Part
My pregnancy couldn’t have gone more smoothly. I am pretty amazed that at age 39, I escaped any and all of the more common issues of pregnancy. There were zero complications, and other than having a million more appointments than I had with my older daughter, there wasn’t that much that made my twin pregnancy stand out from my first.
I know there are more risks with twin pregnancy, and I was certainly more anxious. But compared to my first pregnancy, it wasn’t really that much different.
When the twins were born at 35 weeks and 6 days, they were tiny but otherwise healthy. We were so blessed! My son had to spend 16 days in the NICU, but only because he missed the weight cut off, and had a little trouble maintaining his temperature. It was difficult and sad and stressful but also exciting and wonderful. I was still blissfully unaware of the difficulties that lie ahead. With my son in the NICU, we got a glimpse of what it would have been like with just one newborn. And let me tell you, we thought it was easy!
When both twins were finally home from the hospital, things didn’t start off bad. They were newborns after all. Premature newborns even. So they slept pretty much all the time unless they were hungry. They were so tiny, holding both of them at once wasn’t hard.
Sometimes I miss not being a mom – I wrote about it in this post that I hope you will check out!
Things slowly started to get more difficult.
Silly me, I had pictured my maternity leave as a sort of stay-cation. The twins were born in November, and I thought I would have the easiest time ever preparing for Christmas, since I was off work. WRONG. I barely even remember that month. It went by in a blur, and I was lucky we were able to pull off a relatively normal Christmas for my older daughter.
We settled into a routine, but oh what a routine it was. I never had a moment to rest unless I was nursing the babies. If I happened to be tandem nursing them, I wouldn’t even call that rest. Otherwise I was running around like a crazy person trying to keep the house up to my usual standards, take care of my older daughter, and care for the twins. I really felt like I never got a moment to just sit and enjoy them. It was hard.
I suppose some of our lifestyle choices didn’t help make the transition to having twins any easier. For one, my daughter doesn’t go to school. If she was in school, she would have been in Kindergarden this year. I’m sure having her in school would have made things a lot easier during the day. Over time she has become a huge help to me, but in the beginning she had trouble adjusting. I felt guilty and tried my best to give her as much attention as I could. Time was limited though, and no matter what we did, the twins always needed something so there were constant interruptions.
The bigger house and property we had moved to a couple years prior also made it more difficult as we had a lot more responsibility than we had when our first daughter was born. I found myself longing for our old house, or a new house with a better layout. I am still thinking we might need to move. If we had known we would be having twins a couple years down the road, we definitely wouldn’t have chosen this particular house.
What Makes Having Twins so Hard?
Don’t let those faces fool you! Having twins is not easy.
One of the hardest parts for sure is nursing two babies. Tandem nursing is most definitely not for me. I tried it, I really did, but I am just not that kind of person. I don’t want to spend time setting myself up with snacks and water and pillows just to sit there trapped in one place for half an hour or more.
Nursing one baby is SO much easier. You can get up if you need to with the baby still latched on. You can interact with your baby. If you get uncomfortable, you can move. It can be done anywhere at any time. And you don’t need anyone to help you get set up. You can even do it while they are in a baby carrier. With twins, it’s just so much more work.
Guilt over formula feeding is another thing that makes having twins hard for me. With just one baby I had no problem with my milk supply and I didn’t have to do anything extra. With twins, I tried a lot of things to boost my supply, but nothing worked well enough to get me to nurse them exclusively. They have always needed at least one bottle of formula during the day, sometimes more. This was hard for me to accept.
At the same time, pumping and drowning in water and baking up all sorts of weird cookies and taking a bunch of supplements to increase my supply is not really for me either (although the cookies were pretty yummy). And honestly, how could I possibly even find the time for all that? I had to let myself off the hook a little.
Getting on a Schedule
I know a lot of moms, especially twin moms, swear by schedules. “Get those babies on a schedule!” is the advice I kept hearing. But again, that just isn’t me. I don’t do schedules when it comes to my kids. I find it only causes more stress and wastes more time.
Maybe I am just lazy, but I would rather go with the flow and allow a pattern to develop naturally than to try to force one. If my baby is tired and falls asleep in my arms, great! Then I can just put them to bed. Better that than spending an hour trying to get them to fall asleep in their crib. Usually this backfires anyway.
But I was going crazy that first month. I needed some help. I called a lactation consultant that specializes in twins. She came over and really did a great job explaining to me how I could get both twins fed and back to sleep at the same time and give myself a couple hours before having to do it all over again. And I tried – I really did. But it just didn’t work out. Trying to stick to that schedule left little room for flexibility in our days, and a lot of time was wasted.
Lack of Sleep
I know this is a problem for all new parents – but with twins it’s especially hard. Having two babies waking up at night means a lot less sleep for the parents. Not only do you get less sleep overall, but the quality of sleep is worse.
It’s so hard to say which nighttime approach is best. One of the first twin posts I wrote was about why I am not tandem nursing at night. And I am still not – I am just too darn tired to wake a second baby and feed them at the same time. Sometimes one twin will sleep for a longer stretch and every time one wakes up I am just praying the other will stay asleep.
One baby always needs me
Another thing I find really hard with twins is that I never really get a break. I am home alone all day with the babies and my 5 year old. It’s tough! I am usually always holding a baby unless they both happen to be napping at the same time, which is rare. That means the other baby has to be content not being held. Thank goodness my older daughter is such a huge help and loves spending time and interacting with her baby brother and sister.
Having just one baby at a time, you get breaks. You can put them down and they will be content for a little while. You can wear them in a carrier and let them fall asleep that way. With twins it doesn’t work out so well. You can be holding one fussy baby and just calming them down when the other starts to cry. You can get them both settled in a twin carrier and finally asleep when one decides to poop (more on babywearing twins here).
It’s also hard when you’re having fun with one of them. You’re enjoying holding and interacting with one while the other plays happily in the baby gym, and suddenly they want out and you have to put that happy smiling baby down. It sucks.
Money
This one is probably obvious (and probably accounts for that glazed over look in my husbands eyes during my pregnancy) – but I really didn’t think about how much more money we would have to spend. For one, a lot of those extra pregnancy visits took place at the hospital and were not covered under the global maternity fee. That means we had to pay an outpatient hospital copay for each visit that took place at the hospital.
Most parents save everything from their first baby to use again, and we did too. But we still had to buy a lot of new stuff, because even though you don’t need two of everything, you definitely need two of some things.
Diapers are another expense. I knew right away that I wanted to save money on diapers, so we have been incorporating cloth diapers. But that too is harder with twins, so it hasn’t worked out as well as I would have liked.
I know the expenses will continue to pile up. For every new item we need, every activity we engage in, we will need to spend twice as much as we would have with one baby. This will eventually mean a lot more time at home than we planned. And I really hope my kids are OK with community college!
Harder on Older Kids
While my older daughter is becoming a GREAT big sister, it was definitely not easy getting here. While I can’t compare it to how it would have been with one baby, I can only guess it would have been easier. We have such a limited amount of time where at least one baby doesn’t need something. So there is a lot of starting and stopping when it comes to trying to spend one on one time with my older daughter. Even when my husband is home, it’s still hard. We spend tons of time as a family – but that one on one time my daughter craves often gets cut short.
Twins get a lot of attention, and I know that’s hard on my older daughter as well. People are naturally drawn to twins and find them fascinating. More so than your average adorable newborn. That can have my daughter feeling left out and ignored. I don’t ever want her to feel that way and it’s hard when I see strangers paying so much attention to the twins.
Sometimes One Baby Has to Cry
This is especially hard for me. I believe in responding promptly to a baby’s cries, and when my older daughter would cry as a baby, we came running every time.
We try to do the same for the twins but it is not always possible. Sometimes when I’m alone I just can’t get to the other baby as fast as I would like. There are so many scenarios where this happens. When I am putting one of them down to sleep, when I’m in the middle of nursing, changing, burping one of them, when one is already crying and I’m trying to comfort them, etc.
Leaving that second baby to cry and wait his turn really hurts me as a mom, but what can I do? I am only one person, and I can only be in one place at a time.
How I am Dealing With it All
Since the twins came along, I have had to relax some of my standards – A LOT. Where I used to pride myself on a neat and tidy house, now I am dealing with just the basics and having to let a lot of the other stuff go. I mean, we still need to eat, we need clean dishes to eat on, clean laundry to wear. But a lot of the other stuff (vacuuming, mopping, putting laundry AWAY, etc.) has taken a back seat.
As for feeding, I do what I did with my firstborn and feed them when they are hungry. If it’s at separate times, great. I nurse the way I like – one at a time. If it’s at the same time, I panic. As much as I don’t like to, if my husband is home to help me set up, I will feed them together. If I am alone and they are both crying, I mix up those bottles and I tell myself that my sanity is more important than them getting breast milk at every feeding. And I am starting to believe the truth of it.
I do the same as far as their naps go. Before you go and remind me about the schedules, let me tell you why I think it’s actually better when they don’t nap together. When they nap separately, you have only one baby at a time to feed, change, rock, carry around, etc. It’s having them both AWAKE at the same time that’s hard, at least when I’m alone. So while I don’t get that much needed break that I got with my first baby, at least for much of the day I can sort of pretend that I have just one baby that never sleeps!
As far as my sleep goes, it’s starting to get better. I go to bed a lot earlier than I used to, and get up a lot earlier too. But I’m starting to get to sleep for longer stretches. I’m starting to get through the day without feeling overly tired (as long as I have coffee) and it’s not so terrible.
Check out my post on The First Six Months With Twins for more on what having twins is like.
Long Road Ahead
We are not quite six months in and I don’t see any sign of it getting easier. Different maybe as we move through the stages of babyhood, but not easier. Soon they will be on the move, and I find myself looking into baby play yards, something I never used with my older daughter. I am terrified of how I will handle it when they both are going in different directions. And there will be toddler tantrums, feeding solid foods to two babies, learning to use the potty times two, etc. I don’t see this letting up anytime soon.
Don’t get me wrong, having twins is amazing! Now that they are here, I can’t imagine having just one baby. It seems like it would be almost too easy! It’s so fun watching their individual personalities develop. I never knew two babies could be so very different from each other!
Yes, having twins is incredibly hard, harder than I even imagined it would be. But I wouldn’t change this crazy wonderful life for anything.
