The odds of your wife going on bed rest during the twin pregnancy are much higher than with a singleton birth. Start thinking now how you can help your wife cope with and survive a twin pregnancy on bed rest.

My wife wasn’t on full bed rest with our twins but the doctor wanted her to rest several hours a day. We had to adjust our schedule and routines to accommodate this requirement and to keep both her and our babies healthy.

Even if you don’t have to do bed rest with this twin pregnancy, the preparations and help you’ll give your wife will be greatly appreciated. I recommend you prepare for bed rest and if it doesn’t come, you’ll still be able to ease the burdens of a twin pregnancy.

While on bed rest during the twin pregnancy, your wife will need both emotional and physical support. Ideally, you’ll be giving her that support. If you are not able to help as much as is required (perhaps due to work commitment or related travel), you’ll need to get helpers to come into your home and assist your wife.

Emotional Support

Empathy – Your wife will be going through something that you’ll never experience. Nevertheless, you need to listen to her and share her feelings so you can better support her during this challenging time.

Words – Yes, Dad, you’ll need to verbalize your thoughts and feelings in support of your wife. Talk with her and encourage her during the bed rest.

Comfort Items – Your wife will want some things (food, entertainment, etc.) that will help her feel better emotionally. Identify and deliver those comfort items your wife likes.

Manifest in Actions – All the words in the world won’t mean a thing if you don’t take action and show your wife you mean what you say. Take action and actually serve your wife in her moments of need.

Physical Support

Priorities – Remember that your wife’s health and the health of your unborn twins are your number one priority. Look at the bed rest situation through that perspective and opportunities to help your wife will become obvious.

Remove Burdens – When your wife is on bed rest with the twins, you must remove as many of her burdens as possible. Consider shouldering her responsibilites with everything she does around the house. You can cook. You can clean. You can take care of the older kids. Look around the house. Is there something that needs to be done? Do it.

Comfort – I hurt just watching my wife during the later stages of the twin pregnancy. It didn’t seem physically possible for her to be carrying two babies and still be able to function. Your wife will be extremely uncomfortable. Do everything you can to make her comfortable. Let her rest. Bring her what she needs. Massage her swollen feet.

Bed Rest Means No Rest For You

Bed rest is for the mother, not the father. You’ll need to step it up and work even harder during the bed rest to help your wife cope with the challenges and make it to a successful twin birth.

What else do you think you can do during bed rest to make things easier for Mom?

Picture by Kim Hays

After your twins are born, when should you bring their siblings to the hospital to meet them? How should you prepare them for meeting the infant twins and seeing Mom in a hospital bed?

When our twin girls were born, our other boys were 3 and 1.5 years old. They knew that baby sisters would soon be joining the family and we were excited to introduce them. Here’s how you can get your other children ready for the introduction:

Setting Expectations

Leading up to the delivery, talk opening and clearly with your children about what is going to happen. Regardless of the age of your other children, they should know that Mommy has two babies inside her. Your children should know that they will soon have two new babies in the family.

Talk about what will happen when the twins are ready to be born. Your other children need to know that you’ll be going to the hospital and that they will likely be cared for by some one else while you are away. That caregiver could be Grandma, a friend, or neighbor, etc. Whomever you choose, the kids need to know that in advance.

Describe (in an age appropriate way) what happens when you go to the hospital. Siblings should at least understand that when the babies are born, the doctor checks the babies to make sure they are healthy. The babies then sleep a lot. Mommy will rest in a bed to recover. Mommy may have tubes (an IV) attached to her and will be very tired.

Tell your kids what a hospital room looks like and what they can expect to see when they come to visit.

When You’re At the Hospital

During labor, delivery, and the initial recovery, you’ll be busy and won’t have time to be with your other children. During that time, make sure that their caregiver knows (ahead of time) to reinforce the expectations you previously set. When the kids ask their caregiver, “where’s Mommy and Daddy?”, he or she should be able to reinforce the hospital story you’ve been telling your kids all along.

When to Bring the Kids for a Hospital Visit

When our twins were born, we took a day in the hospital to recover before bringing the kids over. My wife had gone through a c-section to deliver the twins and needed some time to physically recover.

Since every twin pregnancy and delivery is different, don’t commit to any visitors until the twins are born and you’ve settled down in the hospital. Last minute complications can arise that will squash any firm plans.

If your twins go to the NICU, be sure to reset expectations with their siblings. Your other children need to know that their new twin babies will be hooked up to lots of machines and that they won’t be able to hold or touch them.

Prep the Hospital Room

To younger kids, a hospital room is like a playground. There are so many things to discover and climb on (like the fully adjustable hospital bed) that you’ll need to at least do a first pass at kid proofing the hospital room. Dad, this is your job since your wife will still be recovering physically. Tidy up before your kids arrive to meet their twin siblings or you’ll spend the entire visit trying to keep your kids out of trouble.

Welcome the Siblings

We had purchased some “gifts” ahead of time that would be from our twin girls to their brothers. Your twins will get all of the attention from everyone. This will create an attention gap with your other children that they won’t necessarily like. Before the twins, your child or children were the only show in town. Now that the twins are here, you need to be mindful of making sure your other children still feel loved and appreciated.

Our boys were excited to meet their twins sisters and really excited to get presents from them. It worked well in our case but you should consider your other children’s ages and needs and plan accordingly.

I get lots of questions about how to handle crying twins.

In fact, one of the most popular questions I get is: Will twins cry a lot?

The answer is yes. All newborns cry a lot. That is the only way they have to communicate with you. It is perfectly normal for your twins to cry.

Hungry? Cry.

Tired? Cry.

Wet or messy diaper? Cry.

The challenge with twins is that you have two newborns in the house. So even if they both cry a normal amount for newborns, it feels like they cry a lot or that someone is always crying.

I noticed that often only one twin would be crying at a time. This, of course, is good news because you can then soothe that child without having to worry about the other.

Find Out the Reason for the Crying

Before you can properly sooth your crying twins, find out and fix why they are crying. Is it time to eat? Are they tired? Do they need a diaper change? Are they hot? Cold?

Once you identify and fix the problem and they are still crying, you can move to the soothing stage…

One Powerful Method for Soothing a Crying Baby

One method that worked well for us to soothe our babies was the 5 “S” method discussed in Harvey Karp’s book The Happiest Baby on the Block

Suck

We used a pacifier for our newborns or even a finger to suck on to help soothe their crying. Often, just a pacifier would calm our crying babies.

Swaddle

You’ll notice that the nurses at the hospital always swaddle up your babies in a tight little bundle. Swaddling helps keep your babies comfortable, warm, and under control. When our babies were crying, the first thing I’d always do (after the pacifier) was to swaddle them up. Swaddling helped control the flailing arms and legs that often accompanied crying sessions.

Side / Stomach

Pick up the baby in a football type hold with child’s body supported by your arm and his head resting in your hand. Make sure the baby is resting on his side or stomach.

Shushing

Loudly, but not screaming, make a “shhhhh” sound like when you are telling someone to be quiet. Do so close to your baby. Remember, she just spend several months inside mommy’s tummy and heard the constant woosh-woosh of her mother’s heartbeat (as well as her sibling’s heart beat). It was loud in there! Recreating that ambient noise will relax your baby.

Sway / Swinging

With the child’s head in your hand, you can gently sway the baby back and forth. Again, this is trying to mimic the experience in the womb where the baby was in constant motion as the mother moved about. There is comfort and familiarity in motion for the baby.

When we used the 5 “S” method on our crying babies it magically soothed them at least 90% of the time. Often our babies calmed down after only a few of the “S” steps.

Handling Two Crying Twins at Once

The method for soothing two crying babies at once is the same. The question becomes who gets soothed first.

If you have helpers around (which I highly recommend), each of you can soothe the twins at the same time using the steps above.

If you are home alone, you will have to pick which baby you soothe first. In this case, try swaddling each baby and then picking them both up and proceeding with the shushing and swinging phases as you carry both twins around the house. You will become a pro at carrying both twins at the same time.

Crying Isn’t Personal

Although two crying babies will be nerve racking and frustrating, try your best to stay calm. They aren’t mad at you, so don’t take it personally. Stick to the 5 “S” method and when your babies start to cry fall back into the familiar routine. By having a systematic way to soothe your twins, you’ll do so more quickly and with less stress.

I received a great question from an expectant twin parent: “What do you really need to know about the twin pregnancy (does it pay to read all the books that talk about risks, scary births, nicu, etc)?”

Twin pregnancies have their risks and unique experiences which singleton births don’t have.

Do you need to read every book about all the risks involved? No.

If you read about all the possible negative aspects of the twin pregnancy, things will seem rather depressing.

Look at your learning as a “just in time learning.” If the doctor tells you about a condition or concern, then go learn about it and dig into the details.

Hope for the best. But when complications arise, get informed and move forward.

For Dads, I recommend Armin Brott’s Expectant Father book which details the pregnancy very well. It isn’t specifically about twins, but does cover a lot of the medical aspects as well as preparations for having a baby.

My book, The Dad’s Guide to Twins is focused on the logistics of taking care of yourself, your family, and life during the twin pregnancy and how to prepare for the twins’ arrival.

Some highly recommended books for expectant twin moms are Ready or Not Here We Come! and When You’re Expecting Twins, Triplets, or Quads.

Don’t feel like you have to read every book, cover to cover. Try visiting the library or bookstore and just skimming the chapters that you feel are relevant to you at this stage of the twin pregnancy.

In addition to books, try searching or posting on a forum like BabyCenter’s Community or Multiples and More. Sometimes the best answers come from other parents that have been in your exact same shoes.

Do identical twins have the same fingerprints?

No. They don’t.

Identical twins are identical because they came from the same fertilized egg that split very early in the pregnancy process. The twins therefore share the same DNA and physical characteristics.

However, fingerprints are formed well after that fertilized egg split and each twin is growing side by side with his or her sibling. At that time, each twin is affected by the subtle differences each baby experiences while in the womb.

Just like you’ll notice that your identical twins look slightly different (something that often only parents can tell at first), their fingerprints are also slightly different.

Research has shown that identical twins’ fingerprints are typically similar in their characteristics but still unique in their distinctive patterns.

Take a close look at your twin’s fingerprints. Can you spot the difference?

With any twin pregnancy, the chances of your twins arriving early are significantly greater than a singleton pregnancy. Too often, premature twins must spend time in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit or NICU.

Every parent seems to have the ideal situation in mind when going to the hospital for the twins’ birth: Babies will be born healthy and go home when Mom is discharged.

Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Since your twin birth experience will be unique, you need to prepare for different outcomes than the ideal situation.

In addition to the physical preparations that twins require, you need to prepare yourself mentally and emotionally for having twins in the NICU.

Even though our girls were born a little early at 36 weeks, they didn’t have to spend time in the NICU. I count this as a great blessing as I’ve seen other dads struggle with the emotional and physical burdens of having kids in the NICU.

Based on conversations with fellow twin fathers who had their babies in the NICU, here are some tips to help you prepare.

Accept the Possibilities with Twins

Take off your rose-colored glasses and get ready for the possibilities. This should include the reality of twins in the NICU. Imagine how any of these events shatters your ideal scenario:

• a series of complex surgeries on your newborn babies
• leaving the hospital with your wife while your twins stay in the NICU
• bringing one twin home before the other

Expect to go through the phases of grieving, even if both of your twins come home healthy. Why? Because you are grieving the loss of your anticipated ideal ending to your twin pregnancy.

You will experience the traditional phases of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Each will vary in intensity and duration. All will wear you down physically and mentally.

Count Your Twin Blessings

As many fathers have mentioned to me, you can stay positive in the midst of undesired or unforeseen circumstances by celebrating the successes and positives of each day with your twins.

Keep your chin up and be ready for whatever may come. Talk over possible scenarios with your wife so you can put a reality check on your preparations. And make arrangements to take a tour of your closest NICU before your wife delivers. Accepting that time in the NICU could be part of your future and doing what you can to prepare for that end will lessen the blow if those cards are dealt to you.

The time has come to potty train your twins. You’ve got your stash of supplies and are ready to go.

Let the games begin.

Potty training your twins really comes in two phases: teaching the skills and daily practice.

Decide Which Parent Will Train

Which parent should potty train the twins? You need to decide based on what makes the most sense in your situation. My wife and I took turns with each of our boys (singletons) and we decided that she would potty train our twins.

This step is all about expectations. Even though one of you will do the official training, the other spouse will need to support the trainer and reinforce the right behaviors for the trainees as well.

One At A Time

Feeling overwhelmed at the thought of training both twins at the same time? Take heart: it is fine to train each twin one at a time.

You Have to Teach Them

Your twins will not naturally know how to use the potty. They won’t know how to pull down their pants, sit on the toilet, use the toilet paper, pull their pants up, and wash their hands unless you show them. These very tactical skills are essential to potty training and too often parents assume that kids just know how to do it. You need to set aside a day to teach and practice these basic skills.

Pick The Day

Look at your calendar and set aside “potty training day” for one of your twins. Mark it on the calendar and start talking to your child about that day. Get them excited about potty training by taking them to the store to pick out “big girl underpants” and help them prepare for the big day.

Potty Training Day needs to be a day when you are free from distractions and other obligations. You need to dedicate all your attention to the process and focus 100% on your child on this day.

Learning the Skills

As I’ve mentioned before, the book Toilet Training in Less Than A Day has fabulous step-by-step instructions on how to train your child.

It starts with your child “training” a doll that can wet herself. Your child will help the doll to learn how to use the potty. In so doing, she will learn the steps herself.

After the doll exercise, you will need to have your child drink lots of fluids throughout the day. The book’s method uses positive reinforcement so it rewards the child when she has dry pants.

Accidents are followed up with practice drills reinforcing how to run to the potty, getting on the potty, and then repeating the process.

By the end of the day, your child can physically use the toilet by herself. Truly amazing.

Continual Reinforcement

After the mechanics of potty use are mastered, you will need to constantly praise and reinforce your twins during the subsequent weeks and months. Over time they will become more self suffient but be sure to stick around and support them until they can go unprompted and unassisted.

Positive Peer Pressure

One of our girls wanted to potty train and the other parked her heels and refused. So we trained one and left the other in diapers.

However, as the diaper-laden girl saw all the attention and praise her sister was getting, she quickly wanted to train, too. One advantage of twins is that once you get one doing what you like, you can leverage that peer pressure to influence the other.

Have you already potty trained your twins? What methods worked for you?

When it is time to potty train your twins, make sure you have the right supplies on hand.

Knowledge

Before you begin potty training your twins, you need a plan. Ideally, this plan will cover what you will do and say, and how you will respond, react, encourage, support, clean-up, practice, help, and teach your twins. I recommend the book Toilet Training in Less Than A Day for giving you step-by-step tips on how to potty train your child.

We took the steps from that book and printed them out on papers that we hung up in the kitchen the day we were training each of our twins. This helped us remember what we should do in the chaos of the moment.

For the Bathroom

While it is true that twins don’t always need two of everything, the exception occurs with potty training. We found that when one of our twins wanted to go potty, the other almost always followed with a “Me, too!” When you are training your twins, you want to enable them to form good habits so you’ll need to make provisions for them to both go potty at the same time.

You may think that if you have two bathrooms in your house that you are set. However, this isn’t the case. In the early days of potty training, your twins will likely need help. If you are home alone, you can’t realistically send one twin off to another bathroom while you stay with her sibling.

You need to prepare one bathroom as the potty training bathroom. This should have a little potty training toilet, likely a hard plastic toy-looking one with a removable bowl. We used one like this Fisher-Price Cheer for Me! Potty. Turned off and with batteries out.

Augment the little potty with a child’s toilet seat adapter that will fit on your full size toilet. Something like this padded seat with handles.

You will also need step stools to help your twins step up to the big potty and to reach the sink and wash their hands. Make sure you have two stools.

Clothing

Loose fitting clothes are best for potty training your twins. You don’t want them to have trouble pulling down their pants at the critical moment. Try buying underpants that are a few sizes bigger than your child. Make sure you have plenty of clean changes on hand and be prepared to do laundry every day to handle accidents.

Clean-Up Supplies

You will need to clean up five things: the twins, the bathroom, the floor (wherever accidents happen) and clothing.

Wet wipes are your best friend for cleaning up your twins, especially when they poop in their pants. Toilet paper is fine for general use, but sometimes you just need the extra ‘umph’ a wet wipe provides to clean a bum. You can use the wipes to clean out the underwear, too.

Get some disinfectant cleaner wipes for cleaning the hard surfaces in your bathroom during potty training: floor, sink, toilet, tub, etc.

Have a supply of floor or carpet cleaner for handling accidents that will occur around your home. Hopefully you aren’t too emotionally attached to your carpet, because it will take a beating while your twins learn to master the art of potty training.

Stock an adequate supply of laundry detergent and stain remover spray for the extra laundry you will be doing.

You will have poop accidents where your twins’ underwear is so nasty that you’ll want to just throw it away. Don’t worry, that is natural. It is especially hard to handle poop in public when you are away from your cleaning resources. In times like that, it is OK to let it go. Wrap those soiled undies up in paper towels, drop them in the trash, and move on with your life.

Patience

The key to a happy and successful potty training is patience. You must remain calm and positive in your encouragement or things will quickly spiral out of control. Take your time, and lower your expectations and things will work themselves out. Your twins will master the potty and you can move on to the next stage of twin parenthood.

Do you have all your supplies ready? Now, make sure you know how to potty train twins.

When is the right time to potty train your twins? You may hear a lot about readiness and how to determine if your child is ready, but I’ll save you some time: blow past all of that fluff. It really doesn’t matter so much if your twins are ready as much as it matters that you and your wife are ready.

However, once you feel like you are ready to tackle this newest twin challenge, there are several other factors that will help you decide when you should potty train your twins.

Your Twins Want To Potty Train

We were reluctant to potty train our twin girls because we knew it would be a lot of work. This procrastination gave our girls time to mature. Slowly, over time, our girls started showing interest in using the potty like Mommy and Daddy. We found ourselves frequently taking them to the potty at their request.

If you wait long enough, your twins may very well ask to potty train.

You are Sick of Diapers

One of the challenges you have is the massive amount of diapers that twins use. This is a significant financial burden in addition to the hassle of changing all those diapers.

You will reach the point where you don’t want keep spending that money or dealing with always packing diapers wherever you go. This may be a good time to start potty training.

You Aren’t Going Anywhere

Potty training your twins is not an instantly completed task. Plan to train your twins when you won’t be traveling for vacation or business. By sticking around the house you will have more control over accident clean-ups and have the benefit of your home’s familiarity.

Your Twins Can Communicate

Your twins’ ability to communicate to you is a critical aspect of potty training. They don’t necessarily need to be talking, perhaps they are using baby signs to communicate. Regardless of the method, be sure you can understand your twins’ needs and they understand your instructions. If they have demonstrated the ability to follow directions, that will also help here.

You Have One-on-One Time

We found it very helpful to potty train our girls one at a time. To teach them the mechanics of using the potty, I took all the other kids out of the house for a morning while my wife trained our daughter. The absence of sibling distractions and the constant parental attention helped each daughter focus on the task at hand.

You are Prepared

My wife and I love the book Toilet Training in Less Than A Day. We used its positive reinforcement methods to teach each of our kids. Yes, you can teach your kid the logistics of using the potty in one day. Will they magically keep their pants dry immediately thereafter? No. Mastering their bodies will likely take a little longer.

Are you ready? Find out the essential supplies for potty training your twins and how to potty train your twins.

Every twin pregnancy has its own unique challenges and yours is no different.

As I thought about the birth of our twins and the twin births of a few friends, I found more differences than similarities. This pattern likely indicates that your twins’ birth will be different than everyone else’s, too.

Of the five different twin pregnancies I reviewed, each ended distinctly:

• Near full term pregnancy with both twins delivered vaginally. The babies went home when mom did.
• Delivery at 33 weeks with an emergency c-section. The premature babies landed in the NICU for about a month.
• One ended at 36 weeks with a scheduled c-section. The twins went home with mom and dad.
• Boys delivered at 38 weeks via emergency c-section. One ended up in the NICU for a week while one went home with Mom and Dad.
• Twins were delivered by emergency c-section at 32 weeks. The boys spent about six weeks in NICUs in two separate hospitals. One twin underwent abdominal surgery.

The moral of the story is that you should be ready for whatever comes.

Even though you are planning on a natural birth, prepare for a twin c-section.

Even though you are expecting healthy, self-sufficient babies, be ready for twins in the NICU.

The key to surviving any twin pregnancy and delivery is to be flexible. Your babies will arrive on their timeline and that may not meet your expectations.

If your twins have already arrived, how were they born? Early? Any NICU time? As planned or with some surprises?