Twinning: The Key To Sanity Is Keeping Infant Twins On A Schedule

Having twins can be the most amazing experience of your life. It can also cause you to wake up in the morning wishing you were someone else. Twinning offers an honest depiction of life with twins from a mom who tries to keep things somewhere in the middle.

Thinking back to the first few months with twins is hard. Sure, there were many happy moments, and most of those are saved in photo albums. But when I dig deep into the recesses, it all comes back to me””not individual moments, but general memories: of being overwhelmed, of being terrified, of being exhausted and unsure of myself. And getting through it without going crazy””that was the hardest part.

I had the luxury of having a baby nurse live with us for the first month of our twins’ lives. While she was a godsend because she allowed me to sleep through the night, she was a hateful bitch who I got along with only because I absolutely needed to. I would have welcomed homeless people into my house if they promised to feed and burp and rock a screaming baby. Our baby nurse hated my husband and seemed to despise me in many respects, but she treated my babies like royalty, so I put up with her for a month.

She was such a negative presence that my husband and I were actually relieved when she left. And I enjoyed that first day without her, and the second day. But by the end of the first week, I was working on about four hours of sleep and started fraying at the edges.

For their first month, my twins were feeding on demand””whenever they cried we offered formula or breast milk and I’d meticulously jot down when and how much they ate on a Feeding/Diaper Log I kept for each baby. The baby nurse refused however to jot anything down, despite how helpful that would’ve been to me. She said I’d be making more use of my time if I just wrote down memories for their journals (?!)

Anyway, during the first month, my twins ate about every one and a half to two hours. I continued this schedule by myself during their second month, and then went on a rapid downhill spiral that I can’t call ”postpartum depression” because I never went for help and it eventually subsided. But it was a downward spiral to the bleak depths of human existence nonetheless.

I was so tired. So unbelievably tired. And after the hellish pregnancy I’d just gone through, I had a naïve expectation that my life would go back to normal — but with these two babies in it. Oh haha! My new life was so many light years away from the indulgent life I’d lived when my husband and I were DINKS (Double Income No Kids). I felt like I could accept all the changes thrown at me if I could just sleep again.

I was so far gone by the end of the third month that I couldn’t visualize things getting better. My sleep deficit got worse and crying became something I did as regularly as breathing and walking. I couldn’t think of a better plan. I was just slogging away, trying to keep these two fragile little humans alive and happy.

Thankfully my husband can function on very little sleep, and he saw that I needed help. He called my cousin who had 2-year-old twins and asked her what kind of baby schedule she had implemented at this stage. He skimmed a few of the parenting books we were given and wrote down info about daily schedules and nighttime feedings.

His plan was that we would feed the babies on a three-hour schedule for a week or two, then move to a four-hour schedule that neatly worked out to 10am, 2pm, 6pm, 10pm, 2am, 6am. I nodded dumbly, but protested that I had read somewhere that someone (the American Academy of Pediatrics probably) said mothers should feed on demand during infancy. I had gotten the idea that putting them on a schedule so early would deprive them of nutrition, or something vital to their existence. (Who can keep all of that info straight?)

Despite my impressive knowledge about the benefits of demand feeding, my husband insisted we give scheduled feeds a shot, and thank God he did. The three-hour schedule worked fine for the babies, and moving to the four-hour schedule was no problem either. Having the babies on a schedule worked out perfectly for me, because I’m a planner, and this feeding schedule allowed me to figure out what we could do with the rest of our day. Naps could be anticipated, as well as visitors!

Life seemed to change overnight in our house.

My son needed to eat more than my daughter, so we made adjustments for that, increasing the ounces for each of his feedings and adding a bottle at midnight to keep him full and happy. As long as you pay attention for hunger signs and adapt your schedule accordingly, your babies will be just fine. I’m pretty sure the AAP still suggests that ”demand feeding is best” during infancy, but the honest truth is when you have twins, you sometimes have to write your own rules.

You can reach this post’s author, Gloria Fallon, on twitter.

(photo: rangizzz / Shutterstock)