Twins

The day that you get that BFP (big fat positive) on a pregnancy test your world changes. You have a mix of emotions from excitement to fear to uncertainty. Whether you are a first time mom or veteran these emotions are there every time. After the initial reaction your mind starts racing as to what you need to do and get before your bundle of joy arrives. Yes, usually when you find out you are expecting you usually have another 8 months to get things done but that doesn't stop an expectant mother from planning. It's like an excited bride...you want to get everything done early so that you can enjoy the rest of the time with no stress. You may or may not feel pregnant in the early days (I know didn't) but as soon as you have that first Dr. appointment when you hear the heart beat for the first time your feelings about the pregnancy solidify. Then there is the first ultrasound...

With both my pregnancies the first time I was able to see the baby was at the 19 week anatomy scan ultrasound. There is excitement and butterflies in my stomach as I sat in the waiting room with a very full bladder. (NOTE: When the dr. says to drink a liter of water before your appointment...don't! As a pregnant woman you only need a 1/2 liter at the most). My name is called to then go to the ultrasound room. The lights dim and the monitor is turned on. After what seems like an eternity the tech has finally located the location of the baby to start the scan. This time around the tech asked me if I was measuring larger than normal. I expected to show sooner because this was my second pregnancy...well the next thing he said changed our world forever. There were 2 babies! We were speechless...The next 20 weeks were filled with monthly Dr. Appointments, routine ultrasounds and non-stress tests. We were waiting and hoping that everything would be good. Twins are normally born between 36-38 weeks and again I make a comfortable home for my little bundles. At 39 weeks to the day my water broke and I was in labour. As told in my previous blog I had a very fast delivery and we welcomed two baby boys.

Once we arrived home the reality of twins hit. They slept and we cuddled until about 2am when they both woke up and cried. My husband and I tried everything to get them to sleep, I fed them, changed them and we rocked and paced the living room together. In the end I realized I made a first time mom mistake...they were cold. I didn't realize this until 2 hours later and being very frustrated. Our next few weeks we passed by learning about babies all over again. Twins are really not much different from one baby, except everything takes more time. At night in the beginning, it took me 2 hours to feed and burp both babies and then I would get about an hour sleep before we were up again for the next feed. The first 3 months were a blur and I am really thankful that my husband took a month off work and family was around to help every day.

In those first few months I became pretty good at feeding them together (this saved a ton of time), changing a poopy diaper in record time as I usually had another baby crying for a change, and mastered the art of picking up two babies, cuddling them at the same time and figuring out how to put one baby in the crib while holding the other without waking either up.

There were lots of challenges and lots of tears along the way in the these last 8 months and what I have learned is that you really do need to take one day at a time.

Other tips are:

- Your noise level in the house will never be quite again and when you actually do have silence you really don't know what to do with it.

- Twins really do want to be fed at the same time, and need diaper changes at the same time (at least until they start to eat solids)

- As much as one may be crying at night, the other will eventually learn to sleep through.

- It takes twice as long to get out of the house with twins and a toddler in tow. On average it will take me 30 minutes to get everyone ready and packed up and in the car before we can go anywhere.


The boys are now crawling (they learned really early - 6 months) and are doing stairs so they tend to take advantage of when I am getting one out of trouble, the other will do something else. The other day I was making lunch for the kids and I hear crying. I drop what I am doing to investigate and found Victor is standing and holding what little hair David has in his fist while David is trying to sit down. I couldn't help but chuckle to myself as I released his grip, as I thought...and so it begins!

I really can't imagine what my life would be like without my kids and everyday is an adventure.