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This journal is about raising identical twins.
Disclaimers
The opinions expressed here are entirely personal. They were not scientifically proven. They should be treated as food for thoughts rather than as advices. None of these should be followed unless you have consulted professional advices or you have drawn your own conclusion that it is the right thing to do. The author is not responsible for any consequence resulted from these opinions.
Do's and Don'ts
During Pregnancy
DON'T give birth early DO stay cool DO avoid vibration DON'T lift heavy stuffs DO watch your diet DO avoid diarrhea DO take birthing class DO take hospital tour DO talk to your OB doctor DO mention your twin pregnancy when calling the hospital DO get pre-natal care DO wear seatbelt correctly DO get a helperTaking care of twin babies
DO get a helper DO watch your diet if you breast feed DON'T feed the babies allergenic food DO swaddle the babies DON'T over bundle DON'T let babies sleep on the belly DON'T let the twins sleep in your bed DON'T be free of germs DO handle diaper carefully DON'T use diaper wipes DON'T pick up the babies when they cryParenting twin kids
DON'T yield to the kids; DO take control DO let the kids take nap DO let the kids participate DON'T worry, it will get better over time
During Pregnancy
DON'T give birth early
It is tough to keep more than one growing baby in the mommy's tummy, twins tend to be born premature. It probably would feel like a big relief to get the babies out early. However, if you consider the consequences, it may not be a good idea. Premature babies tend to have under-developed organs. Even if they could survive the birth, they might have life long health problems. Raising seriously sick children could be a financial and emotional drain to the whole family. With multiple births, the burden simply multiplies, not to mention the pain suffered by the sick children themselves. Our doctor told us that keeping the babies in the womb for one extra day is better than keeping the new born in an incubator in the hospital for a week. Most doctors believe it is safe to deliver the baby after the 36th week of gestation. Babies born after 29 week of gestation have pretty good chance of survival due to advance in medical technology, but survival is not equal to health. The quality of life of premature babies might not be ideal. It might take a great toll from the family and the caretakers. Of course an oversize tummy could also harm the mommy's health. So it is important to consult your doctor on when is a good compromise. Read further to learn how to avoid pre-term labor.DO stay cool
During our twins' stay in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, the NICU was a full house. By the time our twins left a week later, the NICU was almost empty. I asked the nurses what made the difference in a week. They said there was a heat wave a week earlier. Dehydration induces pre-term labor. Premature births come with heat wave. If premature birth can happen to singletons in hot weather, the worse would happen to twin pregnancies because they are prone to premature birth to start with. It would be a good idea to stay in cool places and drink a lot of water when you are pregnant with twins.DO avoid vibration
Vibrations and shocks can be harmful to your pregnancy. Though tempting due to the aching back, DON'T use massaging chair. To avoid falls, DON'T overreach for anything, DON'T climb high. Drive slowly and avoid bumps. Hang up your bicycle, skis and skates until your delivery. Watch out for those running kids. Use common sense to protect the tummy.DON'T lift heavy stuffs
Exerting may trigger pre-term labor. Giving birth too early leads to premature babies or even miscarriage.DO watch your diet
Eat nutritious food. It is not a good time to try something new. Certain foods are known to cause food allergy. Avoid those foods during pregnancy would mean better health to the child later in life. Chinese people believe shellfish, especially crabs and shrimps, cause skin rashes. My sister-in-law craved for crabs and shrimps when she was pregnant, my neice has skin rashes since birth. Some said it was just coincidence that a prediction came true. That would always make you wonder why there was such a prediction in the first place. It is better safe than sorry!What the pregnant women eat will affect the health of their future child. One well researched area is on the deadly peanut allergy. If you search for "peanut allergy" on http://www.google.com you will find many references on how eating peanuts during pregnancy can cause the deadly allergy to the babies. And peanut allergy is a life-long problem. For the babies' sake, don't eat peanut or peanut butter during pregnancy.
Give up sushi and raw meat during pregnancy. Possible parasites in raw meat might harm the fetus. For the same reason, wash hands thoroughly after handling dirt if you were a gardener.
Chinese also believes that extremely Yin (as in Yin Yang) type food would cause miscarriage. Many Chinese expecting mothers limit their intake of food like water melon, which may cause diarrhea and irritation to the digestive system.DO avoid diarrhea
Bleeding is an obvious sign of trouble, but diarrhea is often overlooked as problem. We don't know which is cause and which is effect. However, we learned the hard way that diarrhea is a sign of pre-term labor. My wife had diarrhea at 30th week of gestation after eating some bad food. The diarrhea ended up in contractions that jeopardized the pregnancy. We were lucky that we went to the hospital early enough that the doctor was able to stop the contractions using medication. It would have been a big problem if our twins were born 10 weeks premature. DO eat properly. DON'T eat food that may irritate the stomach. DON'T take it lightly when you have diarrhea during pregnancy.DO take birthing class
According to our Lamaze class instructor, "fear, panic and pain" go in a vicious cycle. Any kind of birthing class let you understand the birthing process and enable you to anticipate what come next during labor. If you were mentally prepared for the birthing process, you would be more relaxed during delivery, and less painful as a result. The cycle goes the opposite way. That is the sales pitch. How true it is really depends on individual situations. One interesting fact we learn from the class is that an average first child delivery takes 14 hours while the average for second time delivery is two hours. Most first-time parents rush to the hospital at the first sign of contraction. The nurses will most likely send them back home for being 12 hours too early. In the case of second birth, the baby comes out so fast that one may give birth on the road if traffic is slow. One needs to plan accordingly depending on situation. It is important to learn from the class when is the right time to go to the hospital.DO take hospital tour
A hospital tour let you get acquainted with the nurses in the maternity ward. They would show you around the facility and guide you through some scenarios from the moment you were admitted till you were released. And most important of all, they will show you how to get in the hospital at odd hours in the night and how to get to the nursery after the babies are born.DO talk to your OB doctor
Talk to the OB/Gyn doctor about your concerns and worries. Ask her what she plans to do as standard procedures and what she would do when complications develop. Once you know the doctor is well prepared, you can relax.DO mention your twin pregnancy when calling the hospital
If you need to call the hospital for any reason, DON'T forget to mention that you are having twins. The nurses handle twin pregnancy differently from singleton pregnancy. They follow different procedure for twins delivery. For example, expecting mothers of twins are admitted to the hospital earlier than usual because twins delivery is considered high risk. Singletons are usually delivered in a birthing room while twins are usually delivered in an operation theater because the doctors may need to switch to C-section surgery when the second baby is under distress. Hence you must remind them when you are admitted in order to receive special treatment.DO get pre-natal care
Pre-natal care is important to all pregnancy, more so for twin pregnancy, and even much more so for identical twin pregnancy. With modern medical advances, most complications can be resolved if found at early stage. The doctors are trained to watch out for various signs of problems, such as entangled umbilical cords, and Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrom (TTTS) where one of the identical twins "steals" most of the blood from the other twin, causing health hazard to one of the twins.DO wear seatbelt correctly
Wear the belt over the lap and pelvis, not over the belly. Wearing no seatbelt or wearing it across the belly can kill the fetus in a collision. It is important to wear the seatbelt properly.DO get a helper
Hire someone if you can afford a maid or have other members of the family to help on other house work. Let her be the queen for 10 months, because she has much more work ahead of her after the babies are born.
Taking care of twin babies
DO get a helper
Hire someone if you can afford a maid or have other members of the family to help on other house work, such as cooking, laundry, grocery etc. so that you can fully enjoy parenting. Talk to your friends and family and see who can help you when the babies come home. Some expectation must be agreed upon ahead of time. I have seen many cases of family conflict due to differences in expectation. Most helpers, especially the in-laws, hog over the babies. They basically rob the new mother of her god-given privilege to hug and love her own babies. So if your helpers try to take over the caring of the babies, you might as well ask them to leave. Just thank them politely and tell them the arrangement is not working out, instead of suffering through the anxiety. The best arrangement is to let the helpers take care of house keeping, cooking, cleaning, errands etc. so that you yourself can spend 100% of your time with the babies. Don't ask a messy person to help, he/she may add to your burden instead of helping. Your husband and your own parents are usually the best candidates. The next choice would be some outsiders you hire to do the chores for you. Your husband's parents are usually bad choices. I had seen so many fights over new born babies among in-laws that I wondered who gave birth to the babies in the first place. It is easier to tell your own husband and parents your expectation of their role. But it is not easy to do the same to your in-laws without tension.DO watch your diet if you breast feed
Similar to your diet during pregnancy, avoid food that will cause allergy if you breast feed your children. The mother should avoid gas producing food such as broccoli, beans, if your breast-fed babies have gas problem.DON'T feed the babies allergenic food
The babies' digestive system is not fully developed until the 12th month. Feeding certain food to the babies before it is time would cause food allergy later in life. Foods to avoid in the first year include: eggs, peanuts (including peanut butter), strawberries, citrus fruits, gluten (anything wheat based including bread, wheat cereal etc.), seafood, etc. The most common mistakes are egg custard, bread and peanut butter because they are soft and easily ingested. Visit the baby food aisle in your local supermarket, the selection on the shelves is a good indication of what is safe and what is not.In March of 2003, there were some advices from the news telling parents to remove peanut product from their kids' diet until they reach age 3 or even age 5 to avoid developing the deadly peanut allergy.
Each person has many decades to enjoy various kinds of food. There is no rush to try these foods in the first year. Tasting the wrong food too early can only endanger their lives and deprive the babies of these great treats forever later in life.DO swaddle the babies
The nurses in the NICU taught us how to swaddle the babies. The theory is that when new born babies are wrapped tight, it brings back the warmth and cuddling feeling of the womb. The babies sleep better when swaddled. The objective is to make the babies sleep better. So you will know if you are wrapping them correctly or not.
DON'T over bundle
Our doctor told us not to dress the babies too warm. Overheating will result in many health problems. It doesn't mean they are cold even when their hands are cold. As long as the body is warm, you don't need to bundle them up.
DON'T let babies sleep on the belly
For generations, Chinese parents let the babies sleep on the back. As a result, a lot of Chinese people grew up with a flat spot on the back of their skull. On the contrary, American let their babies sleep on the belly. The baby's head is turned to the side with the face pressed against the bed. As a result, a lot of Americans grew up with long narrow faces. Some faces, such as Shannen Doherty's, are crooked to one side probably due to unbalanced pressure on the face during the initial bone growth as an infant.
American doctors gave conflicting advices over the years. For many years, they recommended babies should sleep on the belly. Then in the last decade or so, they changed the recommendation to sleeping sideway or facing up. The reason was to prevent SIDS or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. In my opinion, SIDS was just a synonym for suffocation. Anyone with a logical mind except those doctors knows a buried face means suffocation. But since the medical profession had recommended such a high risk practice for years, they would get into legal trouble if they didn't hide the suffocation statistics under some acronym. I would rather follow common sense unless the doctors could give a good explanation.
DON'T let the twins sleep in your bed
Babies like the comfort and warmth of their parents. Once they have slept in your bed, they will cry when you want them to sleep alone in their own crib. So once you've started, you are pretty much stuck until the child grows up. I have heard many cases where the kids sleep in their parents' bed till age 10 or above.
You can easily add to the statistics of SIDS as you roll around the bed with your babies next to you. It is never a good idea to share the bed with small children.
DON'T be free of germs
Being clean and being germ-free is quite different. We DO believe in cleaning, washing, cooking etc. and other natural ways to kill germs, but we DON'T believe in disinfecting using chemicals. It is okay to sanitize the home if someone is sick. However, it would be an overkill to disinfect regularly for the sake of ridding all germs.
Besides vaccination, human body's immune system is built up from gradual exposure to germs. Many research studies have shown that farm children who play in dirt all the time have stronger immune system than urban kids who lack exposure to common germs. I have read that the lack of exposure to common germs may be the cause of some auto-immune system problems such as asthma and allergy. Some scientists believe the recent rise in number of deadly peanut allergy cases may be caused by germ free environment. The theory is that when the body find nothing to fight, it fights any forign matter such as food.
It is normal for kids to get sick occasionally. Every time the kids got a fever, it means the immune system is working to fight off the germs. What's important is that they have a speedy recovery. Their immune system become stronger after each recovery.
Whenever we called our doctor about the kids' fever, we always received the same instructions. Take some Tynanol and call back only if the fever last more than three days. Before age three, our twins got runny nose or fever almost every month, but they recovered in a day or two. So the doctor never wanted to see them. We believed that it was the way it meant to be. They built up the immune system pretty successfully via the minor illnesses. In comparison, a friend of ours disinfected everything they touched to prevent her kids from getting ill. The trouble is that whenever her kids got sick, it lasted for months at a time. And her kids were allergic to a lot of things too. It is hard to prove if her problem was caused by the lack of natural exposure to germs.
We believe being clean is good enough to protect the kids from serious illnesses. On the other hand, being germ free may actually have bad long-term consequences. An analogy is that a plant that grows up in the greenhouse will not stand the storms. I'd rather my kids to be tough than to be protected.
DON'T use diaper wipes
From our experience, diaper wipes cause skin rashes to our twins. We used a brand of paper towel that has a cloth-like texture. VIVA was the brand we used most. Despite all the commercial sales pitch for diaper wipes, water worked better for us than any chemicals found in the diaper wipes.
CAUTION: DON'T flush paper towels down the toilet, they clog the drains.
DO handle diapers carefully
The fecal wastes can be dangerous if they contaminate food. E. Coli bacteria cause serious sickness if ingested. When the children receive their polio vaccine, the caretakers need to handle the babies diaper extremely carefully. Live polio bacteria can come out in the feces. If the adults get infected by polio, it can cause permenant nerve damage and paralysis.
DON'T pick up the babies when they cry
Many people asked how my wife could manage two babies, while many parents had hard time handling one. I would say that the trick was to borrow a deaf's ear and the discipline was developed out of necessity. She simply didn't have enough hands to hold two babies at the same time. She couldn't afford to let the kids decide when to be picked up. When both kids cried at the same time, one of them would not get equal attention. When my wife was tired and exhausted, she would not let the babies control her, she took control and got things done.
There are a lot of theories about holding baby. Some say that you should hold them as often as possible to establish the bonding, some say just the opposite. But no matter which school of philosophy you belong, I believe the strategic timing of picking up the baby is crucial. Many people advise to pick up the baby only when the baby is NOT crying. Pick a time that you are free and in the mood of playing with the baby. Spend as much time as possible to give her the attention and love she needs. i.e. do so as often as possible but only when you are in control.
There are only two reasons why a baby cries.
Discomfort e.g. colic, hunger, soiled diaper, injury or illness etc.
Seeking attention.When she is crying, check her for problems. If all she needs is only attention, then play with her without picking her up. Wait till she calmed down and stopped crying before picking her up. The crying probably results in stronger lungs, so it is not too bad to let her cry once in awhile. Although when she starts to cry with tears, make sure the tears don't drip into her ears. It may results in ear infection or Eczema.
In our experience, baby doesn't cry more than 1 or 2 minutes after she got your attention. Play with the baby for at least 180 seconds before picking up the baby or not at all. Try it with a stop watch, you would suddenly realize that 3 minutes is not long at all. After a while, the baby learns that crying does not associate with being picked up.
Believe me, 180 seconds of crying seems hard to tolerate because the noise of a crying baby gets to your nerves. I think similar to the reaction to the noise of scratching a chalkboard with fingernails, the reaction to crying babies may be coded into our DNA due to natural selection (ask Darwin). Those cavemen who didn't tend to their crying babies probably had no surviving offspring to carry their genes from generation to generation. As a result, such "indifferent to crying" genes were eliminated from the human gene pool eons ago. Then it becomes a natural response to be disturbed by crying babies.
Baby easily associates her crying with your reaction. If she established a pattern that she would be picked up whenever she cries, then she is conditioned to cry longer and longer until she is picked up. It is not magic, it is called behavioral conditioning. All animals can be conditioned in such feedback loops. If their crying always triggers the same response from you, then you are under their control. To break the feedback cycle, you have to resist submission when she is in control (crying). It is hard to do, because it is human instinct to pick up the baby when she is crying. You can still hold her as much as possible, but make sure you decide when to do so, not by her.
If your kid is already conditioned to cry long period of time, then it may take much effort to de-program her. It is especially difficult when you have other people in the house who are all ready and eager to pick her up whenever she cries. When the in-laws conditioned the kid to cry for attention, it creates a burden for the mom after the in-laws have left.
Parenting twin kids
DON'T yield to the kids; DO take control
One of our twins, Joanne, cried every night after we tucked her in bed when she was still a baby. She wanted us to stay in the room with her. After trying many things that didn't work, we just told her that she was allowed to cry for 5 minutes and if she didn't stop, we would punish her. She fell asleep before her time was up. Honestly, crying was an exhausting activity. The next night she stopped crying in 2 minutes. The night after, she stopped as soon as we closed the door, in less than 30 seconds. She was basically de-programmed within 3 days. She does not cry at bedtime anymore because she learns that we don't yield to her and the crying makes no difference.
We do the same when she whines or nags for a toy or something. She says NO several times and/or stamps her feet then she gives up. Sometimes she would cry. We actually don't try to stop her crying. We encourage her to cry as much as she wants, we often send her to her room to cry. Since it takes a lot of effort to cry, she makes the smart choice to stop often in no longer than 60 seconds. Over time, she stops being a crying baby because she knows crying gets her nowhere.
My wife goes out with a small mothers group. One of the mothers has a 2 year old kid that grabs and clings to his mother's leg wherever she goes. She couldn't get much work done in the day because her kid wouldn't let her. She had a hard time breaking the cycle because she yields to her kid too much in the past 2 years. The kid totally took control over her.
DO let the kids take nap
When kids are tired, they are grumpy and hard to please. Younger kids often don't know they are tired especially when they are playing or being distracted by various stimulus. Everything becomes an irritation, but they don't know what went wrong. We found that nap times do magic to bring back the happy kids in such situation. Kids should take daily nap before age 5.
DO let the kids participate
As soon as our kids understand instructions, we taught them how to buckle themselves in their car seat. We didn't need to squeeze into the back of the car, because the twins took care of their own car seats. We just waited and heard two loud clicks from the buckles before we moved. In fact, our twins wouldn't let us strap them in, they took pride in accomplishing the task themselves. They would yell and cry if the car moved before they were properly "clicked" in. Likewise, the twins learned to select and change their own clothes since early age. Young kids like routines. When we praised them for doing the right thing, they just wanted to do more of them. The more you get the kids involved early, the earlier you become carefree as a parent.DO sign with the kids
When kids fail to get what they want, they get frustrated. Every parent knows frustrated and unhappy kids are hard to deal with. Such frustration is common before kids learn to talk. The best way to eliminate the frustration is to teach the kids to express themselves through signing. There are many books on this topic.DON'T worry, it will get better over time
It is a lot of hard work to take care of two babies at the same time. But it will just get better. When the twins start to entertain each other, you just sit back and watch. When comparing our experience with other friends who have single child, they have a tougher time than us because most singleton child demands undivided attention from the parents.
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started on Mar 5, 2003