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Tips (and Gear!) to Make Parenting Multiples Easier

From great gear to sleep savvy to bathing, feeding and dressing solutions, sanity-saving strategies from a mom of twins

Published on: October 30, 2019

Tips (and Gear!) to Make Parenting Multiples Easier

sleeping parents and twin babies

Strategies for the slumber-starved

Crib sharing

We kept our twins in the same crib for the first three months. For us, it felt wrong to separate them right away after they just spent nine months as wombmates. Plus, having their sibling so close seemed to comfort them both. Once their movements started to wake each other up, we put them in separate cribs but in the same bedroom. Some parents of multiples put their children in their own rooms, and there’s nothing wrong with that. We found, however, that our twins learned to sleep through each other’s noise. For us, in the long run, that has proven beneficial.

Sync sleep schedules

When you’re a parent of multiples, syncing their schedules is everything. It’s the hardest part, but once you can do it, life and parenting get easier. When one newborn twin wakes up, wake up the other one. If one wakes up to eat, wake up and feed the other, too. We were up every hour and a half for the first month and a half until they finally synced schedules. Things got better after that — and I can tell you that those three-hour stretches of sleep at night felt like a luxurious spa day. My twins are 2 years old now, and they’re still on the same schedule. Routine saved us — I firmly believe it’s what makes parenting multiples more manageable.

Establish consistent bedtime and naptime routines

Having a solid routine before naptime or bedtime signals to baby brains that it’s time to sleep. I wish we would’ve figured this out earlier, but once we implemented a routine, things got so much easier. We read stories, give them a snack and water before naps, and then play the same song before they fall asleep. When they hear that song now, they start to settle down, pull their blankets over themselves and eventually fall asleep.

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