Advice for new parents of twins

Here are a few things we've found have helped us cope with day to day life with twin babies that we hope will help our friends (and others) who are expectant mums of twins. I've written it assuming you're planning to initially breastfeed, as that's what I've been doing. 

·         Before they're born, if you have any freezer space, make as many meals in advance as you can - you'll find you don't have a lot of time or energy to cook once they're born.

·         If you have space, set up changing stations upstairs and downstairs with everything you need - it'll save a lot of time. Make sure you also keep full changes of clothes there (you'll need these quite a bit) and we also found it useful having a small laundry basket for dirties.

·         Double prams can be very expensive. To save money, I use a single pram and a baby in a front carrier. It also makes it a little easier to manoeuvre, with less width.

·         Keep two muslin cloths handy in each room of the house - it's amazing how often you need them and how easy it is to mislay one at a crucial moment.

·         If your babies are small (5-6lb), you'll need to use micro (size 0) nappies, as the newborn sizes are huge on them. We found it hard to get hold of them and were only able to find them in a large Tesco store (no success at Morrisons or Sainsburys), so we decided to bulk buy to avoid having to keep going shopping for them (you'll find you get through a whole load of nappies). With our first child (now a toddler), I was constantly stressing about him getting nappy rash if I didn't change his nappy really often. This time around, it doesn't seem as pressing, and so we only change immediately if it smells like a poo or feels damp and very full - no problems with nappy rash yet, and lots of time saved.

·         Make sure you are well set up before starting a feed, as it'll be hard to move once you begin, especially if tandem feeding. I use a sports drink bottle that I can open with one hand and fill it up before I sit down. Also, having a muslin nearby, the TV remote and the phone close at hand will save lots of stress.

·         I had a problem with engorgement - breasts feeling very hard and lumpy, with milk flowing out quite quickly. If you get engorged, you must deal with it quickly to prevent getting blocked ducts/mastitis which can make it painful to feed them and being very full can also make it hard for them to latch on. Before each feed, I used a hot water bottle on top of the breast, whilst expressing a few ml with a hand pump and this cleared it up quickly.

·         If your babies are small and premature, which they most probably will be (mine were 4lb 13oz & 5lb 4oz), they may not feed for too long and be quite sleepy. It may seem a bonus that you get to catch up on more sleep between feeds, but if they're not gaining weight well (and to help avoid having to later do annoying top up feeds), you must make sure they are feeding every 3 hours or less. For me, this involved setting an alarm through the night and waking them when necessary.

·         Try to get tandem feeds going in the night as soon as possible. It is a bit of a killer having to get up to feed just one hungry baby, but feeding two at staggered intervals gives you only a small window of sleep time, so getting them to feed at the same time gives you more time to sleep and in bigger chunks. I use two pillows with a double rugby hold. When the first one wakes (or every 3 hours initially), I wake the other one and set up for a feed. It doesn't always work out if one is too sleepy, but it's definitely worth a try with both.

·         If you do need to give them top up feeds (I had to express milk after each feed, then give it to each of them in a cup after they'd finished), it can be really hard work, with all the expressing, sterilising and warming milk. In the night, I'd suggest taking your previously expressed milk up with you in a cool bag with freezer block and also a thermos flask of boiling water to warm the milk, so you don't have to keep running downstairs in the night.

·         Don't get upset if you have to leave one baby crying for a few minutes to deal with the other one - as long as they are in a safe place, they'll be fine for a little longer.

·         Don't get too concerned about weight gain. The midwives go on and on about it, and it can be quite stressful when it comes to frequent weighing in times (we had to do it every 2 days until they reached their birth weights), but actually, as long as they're feeding reasonably well and weeing/pooing frequently, although slow to start, the weight gain should pick up. Note: My boy twin only did a poo every other day which I was concerned about, but the health visitor seemed to think it wasn't too out of the ordinary.

·         Don't feel like you have to bath them all the time. Being small babies they'll get cold very quickly and waste lots of energy screaming and flailing around. We only bathed them once in the first month and they don't smell - they're being wiped with cotton wool and water quite a bit anyway, so don't need frequent baths too.

·         Accept all the help that is offered to you, whether it's housework, making meals, watching the babies while you shower etc, or helping look after any older siblings. It's also worth asking your Health Visitor if there are any charity schemes in place to help a new mum of twins - we're having a volunteer visit for one morning a week to help look after the babies and their older brother so I can get a few things done around the house.

·         Going food shopping with your new twin babies can be a tad frustrating - people everywhere will stop you to ask the same questions. You want to be polite and answer them, but if the babies are screaming for a feed, you'll just want to get out of there as quickly as you can. I find that answering all of the anticipated questions in a sentence or two before they have the chance to ask them speeds things up and leaves people without anything else to say. For example, stranger: "what cute babies", me: "thanks, they are twins, 6 weeks old, a boy and girl, called Jory and Tahlia; quite a handful".  

·         Enjoy cuddles, photo moments and all the attention that goes with being a mother of twins. The nights (and usually days, too) will be hard, but remember, it will definitely get easier, but they'll only be small once, so it's not worth wishing the time away.