Author: Lauren Cartledge
Now that the girls are 3 months old, we have
Strangers wanting to touch / look at the girls at the shops (or anywhere out of the house).
As flattered as we are that people love seeing the girls, we get stopped whenever we are out multiple times a trip by random people asking about them.
Their top questions or comments:
“Natural or IVF?”
“You have an instant family you don’t need anymore!”
“You are SO lucky I’ve always wanted twins”
“Are you sad one isn’t a boy?”
“
“Do twins run in the family?”
“Did you plan to have 2 at once?” (the best one yet haha)
Don’t get me wrong, we secretly love life as twin parents and the attention they bring (especially from friends and family) but when a total stranger approaches us, lifts up the covered sheet on the pram and sticks their hands in to touch the girls we get really shocked, and usually a polite “Oh please don’t touch them we wouldn’t want to wake them up” follows.
Getting in the car
What used to take a total of 3 minutes of hopping in the car to grab a coffee down the road now results in a
There of course is the standard baby bag prep, bottle prep, nappies / blankets prep etc, except x everything by 2. We haven’t yet mastered the skill of carrying both girls out at once and being able to strap them into their car seats (I doubt we ever will). We take turns in deciding who is responsible for putting the girls in the car, and the other one organises the baby bag / bottles / everything else.
The girls have days where one is more settled in a particular seat than the other, and if we switch off for 5 seconds and don’t realise which bub we have in our arms it can cause a meltdown.
Bath time (Chris’ favourite)
Although the girls LOVE being IN the bath, the whole process of getting them undressed and in there is another story.
The girls are in a pretty in sync routine so when we start getting one ready for the bath, the other almost like clockwork will start crying because “sissy is going first”.
We bath them separately, and have to listen to the other one scream for 5 minutes while trying to distract them with singing, dancing and bopping around.
The Pram Seating Positions (Zoey’s speciality)
We bought an Uppababy Vista double pram that has one seat on top and one underneath as opposed to huge the side by side prams.
Zoey will NOT sit in the bottom part for more than 5 minutes without screaming, so poor Soph gets kicked to the bottom and will fall asleep like a little legend (such a doll) every outing while Zoey blabbers about while we push her at the park / shops / wherever.
Feeding Times (Sophia’s speciality)
We are mix feeding to make life 100x easier on us both.
Although the girls actually sleep really well during the night (around 5 hours STRAIGHT at a time), both Chris and I get up together and feed a baby each. Basically whoever is crying first gets fed first, and 95% of the time it’s Soph.
On the odd occasion where Zo is awake first, without a doubt within 3 minutes Soph will also wake up and start screaming as if to say “How dare you feed her first”. Then poor Zoey usually takes it like a champ and will lay in her cot or just enjoy cuddles with mummy or daddy just smiling away, waiting patiently for her turn.
Our 500 different coloured dummies
Before the girls were born I was adamant that the girls would not be given a dummy which lasted a total of 1 day before the hospital gave them one. Turns out it was amazing as it helped them learn how to suck as they were premmie and didn’t have the skills to do so yet.
Dummies have been the biggest life saver and comfort for the girls and given us many quiet times throughout our day (which we desperately need so we can have 5 minutes to ourselves, usually prepping bottles or washing or cleaning up).
Now the only problem we have is that the girls are fussy with which coloured dummy they prefer (different textured dummies). Currently Soph will only take the orange dummies, while Zo is branching out to the pink and blue ones. It’s the biggest drama when one is crying and we can’t find their “preferred dummy”.
Sleeping patterns
As mentioned above, we count our lucky stars that the girls are amazing night time sleepers (we know how rare this is), but during the day is a different story.
Putting one bub to sleep is tricky, let alone 2. We have a pretty set routine of how we get the girls to sleep / nap during the day which works quite well most days, but there are definitely times where they are not having a bar of rest time. We will get one to sleep, and then the other decides to cry / won’t settle.
After 20 minutes settling that twin and you finally get her to sleep, almost like clockwork, the other twin will wake up and we start all over again. This can last up to 2 hours (but luckily not every day).
Nappies, nappies and MORE nappies
We were fortunate enough at our baby shower that so many friends and family showered us with the most practical gift of all, nappies!
On a standard day, each bub goes through between 8-10 nappies, which yes, means that there are some days where we do a total of 20 separate nappy changes per day.
We usually take turns, hats off to Chris who is a pro nappy-changer now, who was once so delicate when the girls were 1 day old and took 15 minutes to change, to a record of 50 second change now.
Date nights
The best advice we were given before the girls were born was to make sure Chris and I took some time out for ourselves.
We have been really lucky to have my mum, dad and nan Shirley who have let us have the odd night/day off here and there to look after, feed and put the girls to sleep. This has been the biggest sanity saver, and although it is hard leaving the girls (and constantly texting mum to see how they are doing), emotionally, it has made such a difference – we come home after a couple of hours feeling refreshed, happier and better parents!
Life as twin parents – a reflection
All in all, our life as
We are so blessed to have the girls and fall more in love with them every day. We have our good days and our bad, but I am so grateful that we work as a team by parenting together – it has made the world of difference. Parenthood has been full of smiles, tears, laughs and tiredness, but we wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
A huge thank you to everyone who helps us out in small and big ways each day, even just checking in to see how we are doing. We appreciate it more than you know.
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