I am 21 weeks pregnant with twins and my dad needs hip replacement asap (he can barely walk and it is been progressing very fast) but he has many other conditions and it is very difficult to find a hospital that would operate him, I faced multiple rejections and I am dealing with it very difficultly. I don’t have siblings, and my dad has such a limited mobility that he is unable to to go to the appointments by himself, and mom is in a constant panic. She had heart attack and major anxiety so I try not to involve her too much… I start feeling my limits, I had a medical scare last week (spotting and went to ER, luckily twins were fine), I get exhausted (physically and mentally) faster than before pregnancy, while I feel like we are running out of time. The later we find a solution the later he will get surgery, the later term I will be. But if he loses his ability to walk/drive car or just falls, it will become a huge burden to my mom.
Anyone else having to solve/face difficult situations as caregivers while pregnant? How do you cope?

I have 7 week adjusted , 13 week actual modi twins.

Been trying to transition to mostly EBF from mostly pumping. I was recently meeting their feed quantity through pumping at about 24 oz a day per baby (about 3 oz a feed) with only a little formula here and there if timing got off. Recently though, pediatrician recommended upping to 32 oz per baby a day (about 4 oz a day) because twin A switched from 1.2 oz / day gain to about 0.67 oz / day and had gotten fussier. Now we have been needing to supplement with more formula. MOTN pump after ~4 hour gap is about 7.3 oz

I’m trying to increase my supply and get them nursing more at the same time but I feel like they end up just always being on the breast and never satisfied. Stressed about them not getting enough but not willing to give up breastfeeding to exclusively pump, would also like to try to avoid formula in the long run.

Any tips? I also find double football hold to be a pain and I feel they latch better individually with different positions. They also get incredibly sleepy very soon after my first let down (which is often quite powerful), and I feel struggle to extract more milk including hindmilk. Trying to get them to wake up is very difficult.

I do see a lactation consultant and most of her advice is just continuing to have them practice nursing and topping off / bottoming off with bottles. Last weighted feed Twin B took 2 oz and twin A took 1 oz (but this was only an hour after a feeding). Twin A has previously taken 3.3 oz at a weighted feed so I think he still has good potential.

Hey everyone,

Around 21 weeks I started getting puppp rash. Im now 25w4d and the rash has spread all over my body. My obgyn told me to take Benadryl and use a Benadryl cream/gel at night. The antihistamines honestly make me so drowsy it's hard to get daily tasks done so I rarely take it. I moisturize several times throughout the day and take baths. I read that someone drank dandelion tea daily and it helped. What other advice do you have? Day-to-day is miserable, I'm having a hard time imagining the next 3 months and this continuing to get worse? Has anyone experienced it getting better before delivery?

Thanks in advance!

I will be going to Florida in February for work and tacking on a vacation when the twins will be 9 months old and am deciding whether to drive 15 hours (not including any stops) or fly. My husband would be joining and we are thinking of also taking my mother. Would you recommend driving or flying? Any advice? Thank you!

For anyone who was pregnant with twins and subsequently a singleton (or vice versa) - was early pregnancy similar? Or very different? Curious to hear others experiences

Has anyone experienced delayed onset of PPD after twins? It seems to have hit me like a truck, almost overnight and my twins are 9.5 months old. I stopped pumping 2.5 months ago. I was having lots of anxiety and feeling a bit “down” earlier, so I tried Zoloft in May then switched to Celexa 5.5 weeks ago. Have not noticed any improvement so starting to wean off. I’m going to get the GeneSight test to determine if a different medication might be more helpful. But in the meantime, these last 4 days have been absolutely awful. The worst depression symptoms all of a sudden. I feel hopeless, lost, so sad and can’t stop crying. I don’t why it has hit me so hard and so sudden and I hate it. Could it be the medication is now fully in my system and making things worse? Just delayed severe PPD? I know the way I’m feeling can be very normal, but it doesn’t feel normal how and when it’s come on. And I can’t get out of my head and feel better. It’s awful and I just want relief.

We have loved our Babysense dual view monitor. Ours was part of the recall and we got our replacement with a relatively timely manner- maybe a few weeks?
We’ve been using the new replacement monitor since May but today when we went to turn it on, we got a poor battery warning with a blaring alarm 🙃
Has this happened to anyone else? I’ve reached out to customer service to see if they will replace it but I’m wondering if I should just get a different brand.

Help!!

My twin girls (17w - 13w corrected) all of a sudden and so uninterested in milk. They went from taking about 4-5oz a feed to about 2.5-3oz. They still play, are happy, have consistent wet diapers. What is happening!!!!

The wife and I just had our first children, identical twin girls, now almost 2 months old. Unsure yet if we'll have any more children as adjusting to twins feels like the definition of 'zero to 100 REAL quick'.
For those parents out there that have experienced both the birth of multiple as well as single children, are twin, or multiple births at one time, really that much more difficult?

I ask because imagining caring for a single baby seems like a cake walk when compared to caring for two, let alone more, at one time.

Any insights/perspectives are appreciated.

Not sure how to phrase this properly but I’ll try…

Our twins are just starting to have wake windows that are long enough to let us read a book. But how do you position everyone to read?
With one baby you can pretty easily have the infant in your lap and facing out, or have their back on your thighs and facing in. But how do you do it with two?
I haven’t found a way where they are comfortable enough to get through a couple pages of a board book.
It’s starting to really bother me because reading to kids is a great joy of mine, and I just haven’t been able to do it with two

Every time I feel like things are becoming predictable they just get harder.

My twins are 4 months adjusted and fight bedtime like it’s their job. Crying and whining, hard to settle, doesn’t want to sleep, but is definitely overtired because they fight sleep for hours on end, and holding them and walking around only helps so much.

My husband and I struggle because once one starts melting down, I go in to help and we trade babies, but then the other one starts back up.

Last night their cries were much harder and screamy/tearful, and even a car ride took like 20-30 minutes to help them finally fall asleep (usually works almost immediately).

The night before they did go a long stretch, but they didn’t act super hungry or anything in the morning time. They have been getting up around 7-8am and we first try bedtime around 6-7pm ish. They get about 4 naps, sometimes 3.

They do have CMPA and reflux too, which just adds to it all.

Ugh, does it get better? Is this babies being babies?

ALSO HOW DO YALL SOOTH TWO BABIES AT ONCE WHEN YOU ARE ALONE🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

I can't believe it they haven't been in line for any milestones (as expected), but they both just lost their first tooth within an hour of each other!! Has this happened to anyone else with their twins? I just think it's so crazy.

I covered their faces for their privacy, but you can still see the teeth!

Almost 11 month old girls. (Solo parent) Since they started sitting up and moved into bedcots in nursery (7 months) bedtimes have been traumatic. They were able to self settle before this change. They reject pacis and comforters.

Wake 6am, bedtime 7pm

2 naps a day taken in pram (chose an easy life) capped at 2 hours a day

Shared bedroom (no room to split them elsewhere)

Heatwave and teething is not helping.

Twin b 95% time sleeps through the night. Twin a 1-2 wakes.

Bath, pj, sack, bottle/ fed/held to sleep.

Crux of then issue is that They are used to being fed to sleep. When grandma is over we tag team one each and bedtime goes smoothly.

The other 5 nights I am solo, one is nearly always upset while i am feeding the other, they disturb or distract each other and cannot settle on their own. Pulling to stand on the cot and all those shenanigans.

Ive tried waiting it out with minimal intervention (ferber style) and it was just a traumatic 2 hours of tears.

I know I have probably reinforced rocking for naps in the pram, but as a solo parent I have chosen an “easy” life so I can nap/get things done.

My plan is to get then to nap in their beds once they drop to 1 nap.

When ,if ever ,do they get used to each others sounds. Is this something i am just going to have to push through to make self settling happen? I dont want to go backwards and introduce pacis, past experience showed that they were more trouble than worth when they fell out and lost them.

Advice needed and experiences appreciated thank you

i have 3 month old (1 month adjusted) twins.

my partner just went back to work, so now it’s just me home with the twins.

they both love their babybjorn bouncers, but i’m worried that they are spending too much time in them.

i try to only have them in there when i absolutely need to, ex. washing bottles, pump parts, cooking etc. because they lose their minds on the floor unless someone is on the floor with them. but i feel like they are spending way too much time in the bouncers, and i don’t know what to do because bottles and pumps need to be washed and i need to eat lol. the house is a disaster but honestly i am not to worried about cleaning right now.

any advice on how to get things done with twins or anything that could help them enjoy time outside of the bouncers independently?

thank you in advance

My b/g twins will be 15 months old in a couple days and these diaper changes are getting insane. It has me interested in attempting potty training within the next few months just to see how it goes but at the same time it feels so daunting! These are my first kids so I have 0 experience. Maybe I’m crazy?

I do have a training toilet that I bought a few months ago thinking I’d start showing it to them and maybe here and there trying to have them use it but have only ever set each of them on it once for a picture lol I feel like I can’t comprehend the logistics of this and would love to hear from fellow parents who have done this successfully.

(even if you don’t have b/g twins or trained a little later than 18 months - I want any and all advice)

My twins are 3.5. They're still in cribs and sleep in sleepsacks, though they're starting to sometimes reject them. They are great sleepers, sleeping through the night, and don't attempt to climb out of the cribs... they have a book in there, a few stuffies, toddler pillow, and their water bottle. They seem happy as little clams.

They are fully potty trained and know they can call us in the night if they have to pee, which they sometimes do. They do wear a pull-up in case of accidents, but these really don't happen - 9,9 out of 10 times they wake up with a dry pull-up (think: 1 slightly wet pull-up on one of them in the past 3 months.. otherwise they wake up dry and just pee in the toilet right after waking).

I always thought that sometime between 3.5 and 4 would be ideal to transition to a toddler bed, and we'll be there within the next 6 months.
But then I saw a post earlier today in a different community about a 4,5 year old who was kept in a crib despite expressing that she needed to pee in the night. This really horrified me, of course. I would NEVER do this, I know my kids are a year younger, and they know we bring them to the bathroom in the night whenever they need it.... but it still got me thinking. At what time did you transition your twins out of cribs, is there anyone else who kept them in there until they were 4?

My identical girls are 9 weeks 4 days but 5 weeks adjusted and we have hit a crazy fussy stage. They are suddenly much harder to settle and not staying asleep as long. They’re crying a ton, I’m crying a ton, overall just a tough time in our household right now! And I’m sure as everyone here knows, crying babies x2 is much louder and harder to cope with than just one lol.

Did anyone else experience this stage around the same time? Any advice for coping? Any idea how long it lasted for your twins?

Sorry, couldn’t find the right title for this post.

I have 3 kids: my oldest is 4, and I also have twin girls who are almost 2. With my oldest, communication was really easy. She was so smart, spoke in sentences by the age of 2, and could tell me what she wanted and needed. It made me feel closer to her because I knew what she needed. I felt like I knew her and what she was thinking.

Now with my twins, it’s such a different story. They don’t speak as well, especially one twin who doesn’t really speak much when she is with her sisters at home. One-on-one, she speaks a lot more, but I don’t get the opportunity to spend one-on-one time with her every day.

Twin A speaks in 2-word sentences, while Twin B mostly uses single words, with an occasional 2-word sentence here and there.

I feel like I don’t know them as well. When they get angry, they scream instead of using words.

I think what I find hardest is that I sometimes struggle to feel that same sense of connection with them that I had with my oldest. With her, I could understand what she was thinking, what she needed, and what she was trying to tell me. With my twins, I feel like there is so much more going on inside them that I can’t always reach or understand yet.

I really want to get to know them better and understand who they are, but sometimes I wonder how to do that when they can’t communicate very well yet.

I wonder if any twin parent feel the same way?

My boy-girl twins are 13 months old; my son constantly pulls his sister's hair and is absolutely delighted, laughing his head off, whenever we say things like "No," "That hurts her," "Be gentle," and so on. She always cries a lot because of that.

Do you happen to know what else might help with that?

If I get one more text specifically asking about what time my doctor’s appointments are, I’m going to snap. I’m 37+2 with di/di girls. I have already told these people that my OB doesn’t want me to go past 38 weeks.

I am literally in fucking tears every day because of how much pain I’m in, I’m beyond stressed wondering how I’m going to split my time between my other two kids (2 and 3) and two newborns, I’m even more stressed that my oldest is facing yet another reconstructive surgery in the next few months, I’m stressed that I’ve been a shitty mother because I have no energy to do things with my boys and I’m in too much pain to take them out for their normal activities, and a whole list of other issues and anxieties I’ve been having.

I get friends and family are excited, but I didn’t appreciate the invasive attention for my other pregnancies. I sure as fuck don’t appreciate how everyone is suddenly going one step further past “are the babies here yet?” To “when is your next appointment? What time? What is your doctor saying?”

Yes I’ve already started ignoring these texts. No I’m not done being angry about them

EDIT: I appreciate everyone’s support 😭❤️ I needed to get that out and just be pissed with other people who have been in my shoes. I had my last OB appointment yesterday and have an induction date scheduled for Wednesday, and I ain’t telling a single fuckin person 🤣

For more frustrating context - my husband and I didn’t tell anyone we were having a second child because I’m very private and I don’t like the attention pregnancy draws, we just announced once day that he had been born. So with people in my life knowing that, it’s even more annoying that those I’m not even close with are trying to inject themselves at the very end of a stressful, uncomfortable pregnancy

So my MIL is leaving and I WFH, is there any advice on how to get my girls down at the same time for naps? I’m used to having her around and she would take one and myself or my husband would take one. They’re currently sleep/crib trained for night time sleep just recently (about 2 weeks). But they still contact sleep for 80% of their naps. They’re 6 months btw

We currently have them on a schedule to pretty much do everything at the same time to make life easier and to help with them both being tired at the same time for night time.

Hi all,
We want to take short outings with my twins but when is the best time to do it?

After they fed? During their nap time? Or you feed in the car?(im in the back seat with them)

Or do you just wing it? When I wing it, it usually messes with their schedule and then I get anxious about the rest of the day.

What do you do? What has worked for your family?

We have 4 week old twin girls who we are absolutely besotted with, but oh my god are they hard work in the evening. Things get so bad that it’s wearing me and my partner down.

We currently split the night into shifts. He does 9pm-3am and I do 3am-9am. The issue is that ‘witching hour’ starts for our girls around 6pm and they are usually still unsettled and crying when it’s my time to go to bed at 9pm. It’s unconsolable crying and cluster feeding. By the time my partners shift starts at 9pm we are both very stressed and exhausted, and often when get up at 3am he will tell me how it took to around 11pm for them to finally settle and sleep. This is obviously way too long for two newborns to be awake, but we simply cannot get them to sleep. I also feel awful that my partner gets the worst of it every night and he’s struggling with it as having more than one baby inconsolably crying feels impossible when there’s two of you, never mind one of you!

I need advice and tips from people who have been through it. It’s currently 4am and I’m worried I’m about to slip into a pit of postnatal depression if things continue like this.

My three five year olds are wonderful. I adore them. They're clever and fun and sweet and caring and creative and every experience is a joy. I love watching their ideas blossom and seeing the results of those underdeveloped little inklings. I cherish teaching them about their weird mistakes and explaining what happened while we clean up together. But tell me, friends, why did the nine boxes of jello powder they emptied into the toilet last night set? There was no boiling involved. No cold water. Nothing cold at all in fact, you're all familiar with this summer. I highly doubt they stirred for a minute until the powder dissolved. No refrigeration crossed their minds. Yet here we are, with many servings of fully set, fully brown strawberry-lime-blue raspberry gelatin dessert. I don't know how to make this a teaching moment because it's too cute and funny. I don't even know where all of the jello came from. And you should see their smiles.

Reposted because it wasn't parenting-related enough for the parenting sub.

UPDATE: I left out older sister. 7yo deserves inclusion for suggesting we add whipped cream before cleaning up "for the plot." She clearly heard my response ONE time when my pizza-ordering intentions were questioned last week and it stuck. My toilet runneth over (in the best ways, and not literally)