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Raising Twins: Parenting Multiples From Pregnancy Through the School Years
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ISBN-13: 9781610023337
Media Type: Paperback
Publisher: American Academy of Pediatrics
Publication Date: 09-17-2019
Pages: 283
Product Dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Shelly Vaziri Flais, MD, FAAP, is a board-certified practicing pediatrician and mother of four children, including twin boys. She is an assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, editor-in-chief of Caring for Your School-Age Child: Ages 5-12; and co-editor of The Big Book of Symptoms: A-Z Guide to Your Child's Health.
CHAPTER 1 A New Adventure Mom, can Andrew and I practice driving the car this weekend?" Ryan asked. My identical twin sons, Andrew and Ryan, are growing up faster than I could have imagined. It seems only a few weeks ago that I saw 2 heartbeats on the ultrasound screen, learning I was pregnant with twins 16 years ago, and only yesterday that we removed the training wheels from their bicycles and watched them whiz by us, confident and elated with their new freedom. Now, yet again, I'm feeling that roller-coaster sensation of watching our sons take yet another leap forward toward greater independence. Were they ready? Were we ready? "Yes, Ryan, that's a great idea," I said, feeling a mix of emotions common to all parents — trepidation combined with love and pride. Our family has reached yet another milestone as our twins make their way forward on their unique paths into adulthood. Your New Life With Multiples If you are expecting or are already parenting twins, triplets, or more, congratulations! If you are nervous about the challenges of raising multiples, remain calm and take a deep breath. With preparation, planning, organization, and the support of those around you, you can do this. Feeling unsure about parenting multiples is natural because it is a completely new experience and responsibility. That said, you will surprise yourself with your ability to adapt to your new family dynamic. The first year or so with twins is spent synchronizing your babies' schedules to make life easier. As your multiples grow, you will nurture each of them as an individual. In the blink of an eye, your children will ride their bikes in figure-eight patterns around you. In 2 blinks, you'll help them register for drivers' education classes! Your reaction to the news that you have more than one baby on the way has most likely been a mix of strong emotions. I admit, the first month after discovering I was pregnant with twins, I probably looked like a deer caught in the headlights. A hundred questions ran through my mind. How could I be having twins? Is this really happening? How on earth can we handle 2 newborns at once? You and your partner may be having very different reactions. While I was nervous, my husband was thrilled and breezily optimistic. He told me, "Relax, it will be great! Everything will work out just fine." I appreciated his joy and confidence, but I felt frustrated that he wasn't showing fear of the unknown, while I felt unsure of my ability to handle the situation. I wondered just how steep our learning curve would be to find our groove. Here we are, years later, and we have not only survived but enjoyed the chaos and excitement of our twins' early years. I was so nervous when pregnant that I had imagined it would be more difficult than it actually was to raise newborn twins. In reality, the day-to-day routine of taking care of 2 little babies at the same time is very doable. Take things one step at a time, one day at a time. Once your family starts using some strategies to streamline your babies' care, you'll breathe more easily and enjoy the whole process. The challenges of raising multiples are what make the parenting successes, and the overall experience, even sweeter. It is fascinating to watch as each child's unique personality evolves and develops over time. The highs and lows of the parenting experience are amplified for parents of multiples. You'll have moments of intense exhaustion but also moments of unsurpassed joy. Have faith in yourself and your parenting abilities. The human spirit has an amazing ability to rise to a challenge. Any challenge in life must be tackled one step at a time, and parenting multiples is no exception. One particularly tough day may feel as if it lasts an eternity, but soon a time will come when you look back and wonder how the early weeks and months flew by so quickly. How to Handle More Than One Baby You can care for twins or more by keeping in mind the basics of good parenting. A good parent provides love, safety, and security. When you look at the essentials, new babies need only a few things — something to eat (breast milk or formula), something to pee and poop into (diaper), a safe place to sleep (crib), and a safe way to ride in the car (car safety seat). If you streamline your ideas about what a newborn needs, remembering what is critical and what is optional, you can provide what is important to your newborns. Being able to tell the difference between basic requirements and the extras helps you stay organized and keep your sanity. When you have baby twins, triplets, or more, an important mantra to remember is to keep your babies on the same schedule. Synchronizing schedules is a great way to happily survive the first year. When one baby wakes up to eat, wake up both babies for the feeding. If your babies' feedings are uncoordinated, you could easily spend the entire 24 hours of any given day feeding them, one after the other. If you feed 2 babies on 2 different schedules, you may not be able to sleep much, spend any time with an older child in your family, or recognize that vaguely familiar-looking person over there who reminds you of your partner. How Your Parenting Journey Changes The Early Years Parenting multiples requires different skills at different stages. The earliest weeks and months with twins require stamina and an ability to streamline your daily tasks to survive with some semblance of sanity intact. As time wears on, you can ease out of survival mode and adjust to a different mind-set. You will be a master of understanding human emotions and interactions as you navigate all the different personalities that live under your roof. You will have as good of a grasp of interpersonal relations as an international diplomat. Pregnancy During your pregnancy, channel your energy into preparing your nest for your babies. Twins and other multiples tend to deliver earlier than single-born babies, so prepare for this in case it happens (see the Preterm Birth and Other Birthing Challenges chapter on pages 211–224 for more information). Another reason you should prepare early is that your belly will get quite large and uncomfortable as you approach your due date. Start attending your local Parents of Multiples club meetings to meet other parents of multiples and start collecting helpful tips, and join online support groups. Pregnancy is also the time to enlist family and friends for help in the upcoming early weeks and months after your babies' birth. Early Infancy During early infancy, your family will adjust quickly to a brand-new routine. The daily schedule will be filled with feedings, burpings, diaper changes, and catnaps, cycling through the days and nights. You and your infants will begin a relationship with each other that will strengthen with your love and consistent responses to their basic needs. You may discover during this period that while your infants were born at the same time, they have very different temperaments and personalities. Continue to show love and positive attention to older siblings in your family as well, and help them feel as much a part of the process as possible. Later Infancy During later infancy, you'll coax everyone into a more predictable schedule, and your entire family will know what to expect at certain times. Your older babies are becoming little people, and you are beginning to see what makes each of them tick. The Toddler Years When multiples are toddlers, life is overall much easier to handle, but you've got some major milestones ahead, such as toilet training and transitioning to big-kid beds. Strategies that work for single-born children need to be tweaked a bit when you're toilet training kids of the same age. All toddlers start to realize at some point that they are independent people, separate from their parents and their siblings. As a parent, help your toddlers make more decisions for themselves within an acceptable framework of behavior. The Preschool Years The preschool years with multiples are such a great payoff for the years of effort. Your home evolves into their imagination factory. They sleep all night (for the most part!), they use the toilet to pee and poop (for the most part!), and you're now able to enjoy them even more and nurture each of them as unique people. One of the many benefits of having twins is that their "twinship" teaches them about patience and sharing; the multiples experience provides built-in life lessons. Many experts believe that multiples may be more socially savvy than their single-born peers because of the relationships they've grown with since infancy. The School Years and Beyond In kindergarten and the school years, your multiples' world is rapidly expanding. As the years progress, keep in mind that parenting means raising future independent adults. You will make decisions about classroom placement, participation in activities, social dynamics, and more. Your children may already be quite independent, or you may be dealing with a fair amount of competition or interdependence between siblings. Enjoying Your Parenting Experience Parenting multiples can be quite hectic, and in the early days and weeks, it can consume your days and nights. You don't want to merely survive raising them; you want to have fun, keep your sanity, and maintain good relationships with your partner and your other children. Mundane tasks must be done to keep the home running, in addition to our desire to create fun bonding experiences. Instead of folding laundry all day, it would be nice to cuddle with our kids and read them another good book. Most of us cannot afford to hire sitters or outside help regularly, and not all of us have family nearby who are able to help make our personal or couple time a routine experience. As a parent of multiples, you'll need strategizing skills and creative planning to streamline and organize the everyday, necessary tasks as much as possible. That way, you have more time and energy to simply be with your kids. Another part of the equation of happy parenting is finding time for yourself, for your friends, to exercise, and to dedicate to your relationship with your partner. Maintaining a routine household schedule will go a long way toward protecting special time for your multiples, your other children, yourself, and your partner. Your best ally during your twins' early years is their need for sleep. Young children need plenty of sleep. If your family works together to maintain a routine bedtime for your kids once they have grown past the newborn period, you will have a couple of hours free every night to spend with other family members or to think a complete sentence in your head without interruption! A happy parent is a better parent. It is not selfish to seek out personal or couple time. It is healthy and will have positive effects on everyone in your family. One cannot pour from an empty cup. One Size Does Not Fit All Families My firsthand experiences taught me a lot as both a parent and a pediatrician. Our oldest son was only 18 months of age when our identical twin boys were born. My husband and I had to quickly figure out how to care for 3 kids, all younger than 2 years. I remember making a phone call to our crib manufacturer when we had a problem with one of our cribs. The woman helping me on the phone simply could not believe we had 3 kids in 3 cribs at the same time. Efficiency became our middle name as we coaxed ourselves and our 3 young sons to operate on a daily schedule so that we could all survive. We were both practicing physicians and had no outside child care assistance. My husband cared for our sons solo on the days that I worked in my pediatric practice, and I cared for them on his working days. Our fourth child, a daughter born a month before our oldest son turned 4 years of age, rounded out our family. I continued to practice clinical pediatrics part-time through my twins' toddler years, and then I made the decision to stay home temporarily while my 4 children were young. Once all 4 kids were on a more regular school schedule, I returned to clinical practice and a university teaching faculty appointment. I can appreciate twin parenting from all angles — working outside the home, pumping breast milk, and working from home as your children's primary caregiver. My professional knowledge and real-life experience with 4 young kids has helped me learn strategies to efficiently, healthfully, and lovingly parent my children. I appreciate the opportunity to share some of my insights with you and your family. Although this chapter and a few others in this book cover births of multiples in general, the following chapters, from preparing for your babies' arrival to the school years, focus on raising twins. However, all principals, strategies, tips, and advice mentioned throughout these chapters universally apply to families raising triplets, quadruplets, or more. For a specific chapter on triplets, quadruplets, and more, please see pages 225 to 232. At times, friends, family, and health care professionals will be giving you advice and encouragement as you embark on your journey raising multiples. Listen to what everyone has to say and give ideas a try, but ultimately, only you can figure out what will work for your family and your situation. Not all families with multiples are the same. A family with 2 older kids and twins needs to operate much differently than a family of solely twin children or a family with triplets and one younger sibling. Accept the support and camaraderie of others, but you as the parent will find what works for your individual family. Have confidence in your own parenting judgment and abilities, and you will not only survive their early years but enjoy them. Preparing for Your Twins' Arrival My husband and I always hoped to raise a big family. We were eager to get pregnant again soon after our first child was born. As a working mother, I figured I should be efficient and have kids as close in age as possible. (Pretty funny that it turned out to be minutes apart instead of years!) Happily, the result of our home pregnancy test soon turned positive, and at the 6-week mark I brought baby Matthew along to visit the obstetrician for what I thought would be a straightforward initial checkup. I mentioned to my obstetrician that I had experienced some minimal bleeding yet was otherwise well. Apparently, the bleeding was enough to warrant an ultrasound. I entered the small ultrasound room with Matthew in his stroller. The tiny room felt toasty warm from the large ultrasound machine and other running equipment. As we began, Matthew began to fuss, so I hoisted him onto the examination table with me and held him securely as I tried to position myself properly while lying flat on my back. Matthew was content when he saw how fun it was to swat at the examination table's crinkly paper. I continued to hold on to Matthew so that he wouldn't fall, no small feat during an uncomfortable vaginal ultrasound. The ultrasound technician seemed to be taking quite a while. "Hmm ... well, that's what I thought. OK, take a look at this," she said as she turned the monitor so that I could see it. When you're looking at a fuzzy, moving, black-and-white image, it is challenging to interpret what you're seeing. But what I saw on that screen was unmistakable — 2 tiny spots flickering repeatedly, each to its own rhythm. Two hearts! The world stopped as utter shock and disbelief filled every part of my mind. It felt as if I had stepped outside my body and was watching the scene play out, like watching a movie about someone, anyone, other than me. I plan everything — twins weren't part of my plan! Through my dizzy blur of emotions, clutching onto a wriggling, oblivious Matthew, I kept focusing on those 2 blips on the screen. They were so beautiful, so innocent, sending their rhythmic beats across the sound waves like stars communicating in the Milky Way. I was mesmerized and terrified at the same time. Your Emotional Roller Coaster The world of twins is an incredible, chaotic, remarkable, and challenging place. Unexpected joys will be yours as you watch your twins grow and develop relationships with each other and everyone in your family. Becoming a parent changes your life forever, but becoming a parent to multiples is truly a gift. Read an Excerpt
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Copyright © 2020 Shelly Vaziri Flais, MD, FAAP.
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Please Note xv Acknowledgments xvii Chapter 1 A New Adventure 1 Your New Life With Multiples 3 How to Handle More Than One Baby 4 How Your Parenting Journey Changes 5 Enjoying Your Parenting Experience 7 One Size Does Not Fit All Families 8 Chapter 2 Preparing for Your Twins' Arrival 11 Your Emotional Roller Coaster 14 Taking Care of Your Body and Pregnancy 17 Listening to Your Body's Signs 18 Pregnancy Preparations 19 Twin Baby Gear: What You Need 22 Preparing Older Siblings 28 Nearing Your Delivery 30 Chapter 3 The Early Days and Weeks 31 In the Hospital 33 Coming Home 35 Keeping Twins on the Same Schedule: Starting Now 36 Feeding Twins: Breast Milk or Formula 40 Breastfeeding Twins: How to Do It 42 Formula Feeding Twins: Simplifying the Process 44 Burping and Reflux of Twins 46 Advice for Outings With Twins 48 Infant Colic Times 2 49 Pacifier Use 52 Seeking Support 53 Going to the Pediatrician 54 Getting Into a Routine 54 Chapter 4 Early Infancy and Getting on a Schedule 57 Sleep: What Your Infant Twins (and You) Need 59 Sharing Space: Cribs and Bedrooms 60 The Science Behind Good Sleep Habits 61 Strategies for Good Sleep Habits 62 The Power of the Bedtime Ritual 64 Daytime Naps 67 Feeding Your infant Twins 68 Your Twins Getting Stronger 70 Diaper Rash 72 "Twin proofing" 73 Returning to Work 74 Toys and Books 75 Outings With Your Twins 76 Continuing to Seek Support 76 Bonding With Each Twin 77 Chapter 5 Later Infancy and First Birthday 79 Sleep Patterns 81 Mealtime: A Whole New World 83 Solid and Table (Finger) Foods 85 Sippy Cup Training: Bye-bye, Bottles 87 Oral Health 90 Play and Development 91 Language and Communication 94 Safety Issues 95 Discipline: Working Toward Acceptable Behaviors 97 Your Emotions: How to Stay Sane 98 Finding Time With Each Twin 100 Year 1: An Extraordinary Time That Flies By! 101 Chapter 6 The Toddler Years (1- and 2-Year-Olds) 103 Sleep Issues 106 Transitioning to Big-Kid Beds 108 Nutrition and Mealtimes 112 Simplifying Mealtimes 116 Twins: Distinctive Individuals With a Shared Bond 116 The Importance of Positive One-on-one Time 117 Kind and Effective Discipline 120 Encouraging Language Development 125 Toilet Training 127 Safety Issues 132 Family Relationships: A New Baby 135 Keeping a Twin-Friendly Budget: Saving Time and Money 135 Having Fun 137 Chapter 7 The Preschool Years (3- and 4-Year-Olds) 139 Sleep Issues 143 Socialization: Twins' Roles Within a Family 144 Preparing for Preschool 147 One-on-one Time 151 Two Distinct Individuals 151 Expanding Social Circles 154 Consistency and Discipline 155 Advanced Toilet Training and Independence 159 Emotional and Social Support for Parents 163 Budgeting and Practical Matters 165 Rainy Days: Painting for a Crowd 167 Enjoying the Here and Now 167 Chapter 8 The School Years: As Your Twins Grow 169 Built-in Life Lessons 172 Classroom Placement 172 Competition 174 Balance: Pursuing Individuality Yet Avoiding Activity Overload 176 Boosting Literacy 177 Age-Appropriate Chores for Kids 177 Teaching School-aged Twins Vital Safety Information 182 Multiple Kids, Multiple Shoelaces 183 Bedroom Spaces 184 Family Dynamics and Behavior 185 Travel and Having Fun 185 Adolescent Multiples 187 Straight From the Source: What Twins Have to Say 188 Chapter 9 Support, Emotional Health, and Time-savers 193 The Teamwork of Raising Multiples 196 Seeking Support 197 Mental Health: Keeping the Big Picture in Mind 201 Keeping Your Cool 202 The Built-in Benefits of Multiples 203 Healthy Family Dynamics 204 Time-saving Strategies 205 Strategies for Special Occasions 206 Modified Expectations 207 Finding Lessons in the Mishaps 208 Where's the Answer Key? 209 Chapter 10 Preterm Birth and Other Birthing Challenges 211 The NICU: Different Levels of Care at Different Hospitals 214 Nutrition 216 Conditions Commonly Treated in the NICU 217 Bonding in the NICU 220 Going Home 220 From the NICU to Beyond 221 Facing Infertility 222 Chapter 11 Triplets, Quadruplets, and More 225 Pregnancy Preparation 227 Synchronized Schedules 228 Surviving the Early Months 229 Organizing the Multiples Way 230 Toilet Training 230 Interpersonal Relationships, Individuality, and Emotions 231 The Adventure of a Lifetime 232 Chapter 12 Multiples: Facts, Lore, and More 233 The Distinction Between Identical Twins and Fraternal Twins 236 More and More Multiples: The Statistics 237 The Representation of Twins in the Media 239 Chapter 13 A Glimpse Into the Twin Experience 241 Captain Scott Kelly's Story 243 Magda and Margaret 246 Lorelai and Leighton 248 Kathy's Story 249 Patty and Kathy 250 Andrew and Ryan 251 Alex and Ian 252 Multiples and the Wide World of Sports 253 Chapter 14 Single Parenting, Partnership Challenges, and Divorce 257 Early Signs of Trouble 259 Balance in Household Tasks 260 When Trouble Spots Emerge 261 When Divorce Is the Decision 262 Resources for Families Regarding Divorce 264 Resources and Websites for Families With Multiples 267 Index 273Table of Contents