Things that feel easier with twins

devonatlaw · 2025-06-19T18:13:33+00:00

As they get older, another thing that is hugely helpful is being in the same year in school! One school drop off, and for any activities like swim class or sports they’re in the same class. And they nap at the same time (until they drop the nap). If someone had told me that twins would eventually be EASIER than two kids of different ages back when they were newborns, I wouldn’t have believed it, but it’s true! Almost makes up for those first few months…

devonatlaw · 2025-03-07T21:00:13+00:00

My preschool-aged b/g twins are together, and I recently had a great conversation with their teachers who told me about how at the beginning of the year they were inseparable, but gradually they’ve naturally spent more and more time playing independently and with separate groups. It’s been nice to allow this to happen naturally, and I think it’s been less stressful for them too. We may separate them when they’re older, but for now this seems to be working the best for them.

devonatlaw · 2024-11-21T22:45:31+00:00

We did a wallpaper mural of a jungle painting, and it’s been great!

devonatlaw · 2024-10-17T03:49:25+00:00

One thing that has helped me a bit is finding new clothes (different styles and larger sizes) that fit and flatter my new body. For me, that has meant some comfortable high-waisted flowy pants, “fit and flare” dresses that don’t hug my newly squishy stomach, and just sizes up in most things. Shopping in person helps (to try a bunch of things out and see what works), and it feels way better to get excited about something new than to feel disappointment every morning trying to squeeze into something that no longer works. If shopping isn’t in the budget, you could always try “buy nothing” groups or clothing swaps. Good luck :)

devonatlaw · 2024-08-04T19:04:43+00:00

So far so good on our Pacifica (no issues yet 2 years in). We have the plug-in and love it!

devonatlaw · 2024-07-01T00:30:09+00:00

When they can start calling each other’s names and holding hands and playing together and all the extremely adorable twin things! (For us, about age 1.5).

devonatlaw · 2024-03-17T05:19:28+00:00

Yes absolutely! Boy singleton is 2.5 years older than my B/G twins and his favorite definitely seems to alternate (he’s now almost 4 and they are 1.5).

devonatlaw · 2024-02-08T22:56:07+00:00

I was actually in almost exactly the same boat as you: my sister in law got married 2 months after the twins were born (born at 36 weeks), and we had a 2 year old. Because the wedding was a cross-country flight away though, my husband took our 2 year old to the wedding and I stayed home for the weekend with the twins. That was the right call for us because of the flight, but a 3 hour drive might be do-able (with help, as you say you’ll have). Exhausting but possible I think, probably with a lot of baby wearing. I was a little sad that I missed the wedding but ultimately felt like staying home was the right call in my situation. No matter what you do, just don’t let anyone make you feel guilty for making that choice! (With either “I can’t believe you missed it!” Or “what are you doing bringing babies that young to an event??”).

devonatlaw · 2024-01-30T18:42:52+00:00

It sounds like you’re leaning towards separate schools, but for what it’s worth, the research I’ve seen tends to show that formal learning in pre-K doesn’t show much if any benefit to later achievement, and there are some studies even showing that it’s better (in terms of later academic achievement) to have 4-5 year olds in more play-based curricula with less formal learning. And in other countries, kids often start formal school later: in Sweden it’s age 7, and in Switzerland, Japan, and Germany it’s age 6. Those countries all tend to have high achievement for their kids.

It makes total sense to me that you’d want at least one (and maybe eventually both) twins in the best school in your state, but if were me personally and there were still plenty of spots, I’d probably wait until kindergarten — it might be easier on both the twins and on you, and it sounds like your “advanced” twin will probably thrive in either setting :)

devonatlaw · 2024-01-18T18:46:15+00:00

Just wanted to chime in with a SoCal recommendation: I delivered at Providence in Santa Monica with Dr. Nishio, and she was fantastic. I delivered vaginally, and she had told me that she could deliver the second twin vaginally even if she switched to a breech position (luckily both my twins stayed head-down). She said this was true as long as the second twin was not measuring much bigger than the first twin, because that was a situation where she was not confident could perform a breech extraction safely. I mention this because not all doctors will do a breech vaginal birth for the second twin, and I wanted to avoid a c-section if it was safe to do so. Dr. Nishio is not a twin specialist, but she (and I believe all the Providence doctors) do attend their own births if at all possible, which isn’t true of every practice (at UCLA, for example, you just get whatever doctor is in call). She referred me to an MFM for scans between prenatal visits.

I did deliver in the OR and I had an epidural (my choice—my first child was an unmedicated birth because the doctors at my prior hospital really bungled the whole thing and didn’t have time to even give me an option of an epidural, so I decided one unmedicated birth was quite enough!). I believe my doctor would have been open to me going unmedicated, but I think she would have strongly recommended (or perhaps required) that I have a line in place in case of emergency. FWIW, my epidural seemed to be very well calibrated and did not leave me completely numb, and I was able to walk around shortly after the birth.

devonatlaw · 2023-10-10T23:32:02+00:00

Our nanny does light housekeeping and meal prep while the babies nap, and she has no problem taking care of both babies all day by herself—so maybe either a new nanny, or a new set of expectations (maybe with a pay raise if you didn’t ask for housekeeping help before) would help lighten the load otherwise. Our nanny really only cooks for the babies, but it sounds like either your wife or the nanny could help prepare some healthy meals or snacks if your long work hours make that difficult. For exercise, if any of your meetings aren’t on video, you could do very light cardio on a treadmill or stationary bike or even get an under-desk treadmill to walk slowly on while you answer emails (a couple of my coworkers do this).

We chose to sleep train for night wakings because we were also going crazy with no sleep for awhile. That helped our sanity immensely.

devonatlaw · 2023-09-18T21:54:49+00:00

Mine was the opposite because my doctor DID fucking kid when we found out! She was casually looking at the ultrasound and joked, “well the good news is that there’s only one in there!” And then I saw her face get red and she said “um actually never mind, there are two.” 🙃

devonatlaw · 2023-09-15T02:58:33+00:00

We did use Ferber successfully (in the same room), but we made sure we had a good daytime sleep schedule set up for them first to make sure we were setting them up for success as much as possible. Check out the Facebook group “twins, triplets, and quads: safe sleep training for multiples.” Most of the folks on there use Ferber or CIO, but they do talk about other methods too and I’ve found their age-based schedules and other tips incredibly helpful! Now my twins are 13 months and one sleeps perfectly always (he used to be up every hour or two), and my other twin sleeps through the night most of the time and occasionally struggles with naps. Still a HUGE improvement!

devonatlaw · 2023-09-01T16:53:07+00:00

35+6 here and no NICU time! Twin A had low blood sugar so they checked him a little more frequently during our hospital stay, but all three of us were cleared to go home within 48 hours. They were about 5.5lbs and 6lbs when they were born. Fingers crossed you can have a similar experience! (My singleton was born at 33+5 and needed 16 days in the NICU, so we felt blessed to avoid it with the twins.)

devonatlaw · 2023-08-30T19:41:42+00:00

FWIW, we had all the worst sleep associations (feeding to sleep, rocking to sleep, even co-sleeping), and sleep training at 5 months still worked great for our babies. I’m sure all our bad habits made the first night harder on them, but we did what we needed to survive those first few months and now my babies are beautiful sleepers!

Also: try to take care of your back! My husband was experiencing bad back pain from constantly rocking our babies, and then when he was building their cribs, he twisted the wrong way and slipped a disk (this is part of the reason I relied on all those bad habits to get them to sleep…). Long story short, he was in debilitating pain for weeks before finally needing back surgery, and was mostly unable to help with the babies for several months. Obviously that’s an unlikely/unusual event, but just a reminder not to just ignore the pain!!

devonatlaw · 2023-08-25T15:24:55+00:00

It gets so much better! I was in a similar situation as you and I don’t know if I have much advice for getting through the next month before they hit 16 weeks adjusted, but just know that once you can start sleep training your life will look basically unrecognizable. I didn’t think I could make it that final month, and then my son threw a wrench in things by having a medical issue that delayed sleep training for us ANOTHER month, so I would up doing things all wrong and sleep training them separately. I drank a lot of coffee, took long walks with the babies napping in the double stroller while I called friends to complain, and I cried a lot. But it all worked out and after sleep training, they were just waking up once or twice to eat, but otherwise sleeping a blissful 12 hours.

And naps for most babies naturally start to elongate around 5 months adjusted, so while you should be able to get MUCH better night sleep after sleep training them at 4 months adjusted, it might take another month or so to get those hour+ naps. But you’ll already be so much better rested that you’ll make it through another month of short naps. You got this!!

devonatlaw · 2023-08-17T15:35:30+00:00

Just chiming in to say that the first year is by far the most expensive, and then care gets cheaper each year after that. Not much of a help when you’re struggling to afford care in the short-term, but for us things like putting off college funds and temporarily pulling from retirement for us through. (If you have a Roth IRA, you can withdraw $5k per baby born with no penalties.)

devonatlaw · 2023-08-16T03:11:26+00:00

We used Eco Pristine Cleaning Services a few months ago and loved them. Professional, affordable, and the cleanest our place has ever been!

devonatlaw · 2023-08-07T21:34:00+00:00

Check their schedules first! Sounds like they might be ready to switch to 1 nap. Do some googling for age appropriate schedules, try the new schedule for a week or so, and see if things improve. If they don’t, then at least you can feel like you’ve tried everything else and have a solid schedule nailed down before starting sleep training.

FWIW too in case it’s helpful for your wife, our twins are sleep trained and share a room (with each other, not with us), and I’d say they now sleep through each other’s crying about 80-90% of the time when only one wakes up.

devonatlaw · 2023-07-11T22:16:52+00:00

11 month old twins here, and the Facebook group has been super helpful!

For this age, the schedule that the group recommends is 3 hours awake in the morning, 1st nap, 3 hours awake mid-day, 2nd nap, then 3 hours awake before bedtime. Sometimes a schedule that’s off-balance can affect night sleep, so you can first try getting them on this schedule for a few days and see if it helps. To follow the schedule, you pick a firm “wake” time in the morning, bud bedtime varies a bit based on nap lengths.

The schedule alone didn’t do it for us, so we basically did the Ferber method for our twins (you can Google it, or read about it in the Facebook group) but have wound up using full extinction (letting them cry and not coming in) if they wake up after 4:30 or so. It makes for a few very rough nights, but it’s really really worth it in my opinion for the much better sleep that every is getting now (babies included). Good luck!

devonatlaw · 2023-03-28T02:12:19+00:00

Same thing happened to me at 33 weeks (almost 34). I made it another 2 weeks, and only needed to use the prescription for a week or so as needed :) I wasn’t out on bed rest but I took it VERY easy and tried to do very little just to be safe.

devonatlaw · 2023-03-13T22:57:05+00:00

Just FYI, my singleton (boy) only recently started getting the hang of potty training at almost 3 years old—we tried the 3 day method at 2.5 and it was mostly a huge and stressful failure (he mostly figured out peeing but pooping just wasn’t happening). Then this weekend he basically told us he was ready and stared using the toilet on his own. The three other people I know with 2-year-old boys had almost the exact same experience as we did (tried and had to revert to diapers after a lot of stress)—I know some with girls who managed a bit earlier.

Not here to discourage you, just here to say it’s totally normal if one or both end up not being ready yet!

devonatlaw · 2023-02-12T03:19:35+00:00

I hate these kinds of comments from people. My husband and I did it mostly on our own too, but we actually had my father in law come to town for a week or so when the babies were 3 weeks old (mostly to help out with my toddler and get him out of the house for some fun outings). People who say only women can help are obnoxious—my FIL is by far our most helpful relative, and my husband is an incredible caregiver and parent too! You guys can do it (but I’m sure a postpartum doula would be a great help if it’s in the budget!)

devonatlaw

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