Some Pictures and Tips for Having Twin Babies

 Kayla had her dance recital a week ago. We figured out that this is her fifth dance recital which makes it 2.5 years in dance! I was proud of her. She did all the steps and seems to be getting better every time.

A friend emailed me and told me that she is expecting twins boys this summer. She asked me for my advice on dealing with twin babies. I wrote her back and decided to copy it here. I know there are a few mammas expecting twins that read my blog so here it is:

So my suggestion with breastfeeding is start out feeding them separately for the first 4 weeks or so. When they become better breastfeeders than you can feed at the same time. I did have a twin pillow but I found that using a bunch of pillows to situate them both in the football hold was better than the special nursing pillow. The other thing with breastfeeding: do NOT stress about it! If it works out that is awesome, if not that's okay too. I was able to bf till they were 6 months and I was dang proud of that:) Once I was back at work full time, it was just too hard to BF. And when you are in the hospital, don't be afraid to let the nursery feed them at night and sleep as much as you possibly can...you don't get much of that when you get home!

If you have a Csection, walking helps a LOT with the pain. I walked every hour while I was in the hospital.

If you can arrange for babysitting for the older kids or people offer to take them DO IT! I found that the most helpful. When they are tiny and you are recovering, you won't have a lot of energy left over for your older kids (sad I know).

If you don't have a good pump, get one:) I have the Medela pump in style and I love it. Because you are nursing so much the first 4 months, it's nice to have a pump so you can get out of the house for more than 90 minutes.

Because you will be breastfeeding a lot, make sure you are stocked with beverages for you and good books, TV shows, Netflix, and other things you can read or watch. Old episodes of The Office got me through some loooong nights!

Everyone will tell you to get them on the same schedule but don't stress about that because they kind of fall in to the same schedule anyway. The first 6-12 weeks you will probably just be up almost all night, somehow you will survive though.

Journal! It will be hard to find time but make sure you blog or write in a journal about your feelings, the babies, sleeplessness, everything. I still go back and read my blog posts from when they were brand new and there is so much that I have already forgotten about how great it was.
And my final word of advice: enjoy them. Soak up every moment because twins seem to grow twice as fast as my first did. They are so sweet swaddled in their crib together..so awesome!
You are going to love it. Life is painful now and it's going to get worse between now and the time you have them but in my opinion, being a parent of twin babies is far better than being PREGNANT with twins...it's rough. Hang in there. The pain and waiting is so worth it!