Tell me this gets easier

[scottishtab]

NC as this is outing, posting for a bit of a handhold / advice. Hoping nobody thinks I'm too much of an awful person

DTDs are 12 weeks old, born 6 weeks early so in terms of development are 6 weeks old (I guess??!)

I love them. They are the product of a very very long fertility battle and twins was the most extraordinary surprise. But I am struggling a lot.

All of my friends have singletons and all of their experiences just seem so different to mine. I feel I'm on this non stop hamster wheel of feeding and changing and if one isn't crying the other one is. It doesn't feel I get that magic bonding time that singletons mums are enjoying. Sleep is just out of the questions as both girls wake up throughout the night and once one is settled the other one starts up. It just feels so hard. When does it get easier, or does it? Now DP is back at work I'm here on my lonesome all day with the girls and it's relentless!

@scottishtab

Goodness me Thankyou for your responses today. It was truly needed.

Today, no word of a lie, between one feed I had 20 minutes before it all started again, and I was holding a baby in that 20 minutes.

Then my husband dared to have a cancelled train on the way home ... well! It wasn't just the babies crying.

They are magic, but this is tough. Because they are technically 12 weeks but behaving like 6 week olds... So friends who have singleton babies seem to expect that we are a lot further ahead than we are! I have a friend coming over next weekend and I keep trying to remind her not to expect too much from us.

Without wishing to wish their little lives away, I just look forward to them being able to hold their own bottles.

I'll regret saying this when my walls are covered in crayon, and will yearn for these newborn days again!

Bless you it’s so so hard isn’t it.

The one consolation I had is that I went through so many Netflix series when I was sat on the sofa during the constant feeding cycle and I did not feel guilty one little bit, so take every advantage you can.

What you’ll soon realise is that your friends with singletons just don’t get it, as much as they try to, if you don’t have twins you absolutely cannot understand the pressures

As an aside I also went through 5 rounds of IVF to get our girls, even the closest family members said during my hardest times “sometimes you need to be careful what you wish for” if this happens to you, don’t do what I did and just nod and smile, just slap them silly 😂

You have every single right to say, yes we absolutely wanted this and yes it’s a million per cent harder than I expected.

Just remember take one day at a time, you’re doing fabulous xxx

Hi OP

My twins are about to turn 4 and yeah, those early weeks are tough!!

So for reflux have you tried a feeding pillow which angles them up? I bought mine on Amazon dead cheap. Will try to find.

Use dummies. Seriously just do it.

Walk every day. We had the MountainBuggy Duet and every morning we went out at 10 for a "nap walk", ended up at Costa where they usually slept long enough for me to have a coffee.

Get them both in the same feeding schedule, pref 4h. I remember that - 3am -7am - 11am - 3pm - 7pm - 11pm - and so it went round. Till one day they could sleep through from 11pm till 6.

You'll be grand, just keep on going and keep an eye on your mental health.

The feeding cushion is this one

www.amazon.co.uk/Maternity-Nursing-Support-Removable-Washable/dp/B08YLB79JZ/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?crid=QV33Z3DTTMB5&keywords=twin+feeding+pillow&sprefix=twin+fee%2Caps%2C154&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&qid=1643836334&sr=8-3

My twins are 6 now and I have completely blocked out the early years in a fog of sleep deprivation. Once they are three though they were very self sufficent and happy to play together for hours chatting away building duplo, organising tea parties.

This struck such a chord. It is such, such hard work getting through those early days, and it is a very different experience to that that a lot of singleton parents will be having. I have an elder daughter too, who was a very chilled out baby, and her early months were a happy time of cafes with other new mums and long feeds in front of the TV. (I know that is very much not the case for all singleton parents, of course, but I do understand why you'd be looking at them and feeling like that!)

Then you have the additional emotional toll that IVF and the NICU will have taken and no time to process that. And the feeling that you should be grateful and enjoying it and enjoyment is very hard to come by. It's OK to feel like that, it really is.

And it will get easier.

As others have said, meeting other twin parents is hugely helpful, because they do tend to get it. And just get through this bit however you can (lean on people, lower your standards, work out with your partner what you both need and can contribute in terms of sleep and time off) in the knowledge that it will change. We refer to their early days as 'the haze' now, there is so much stuff from back then that I just can't remember.

About the 'magic bonding' guilt - I think this is totally normal with twins, and you don't need to read much on here to know that plenty of mums of single babies feel it too. I very much had the 'magic bonding' with my eldest, and I did feel the loss of it with the twins. The way I rationalised it was that they were part of a family unit in a way that the eldest hadn't been as a baby. There are pros and cons to all set-ups: only child, eldest child, twin, member of big family etc, and this was one of the cons. I felt particularly guilty as one twin was very demanding (colic, reflux, eventually diagnosed with asthma), and it felt as though the other spent the first six months of her life waiting in the bouncy chair. But they were part of a family that loved them and was doing their best, and I did my best to know that that was enough.

My twins are teens now, and having twins has overall been a brilliant experience that I feel hugely lucky to have had. There have been other challenges along the way of course, but nothing has come close to the difficulty of those early days yet. Keep on keeping on, you can do it.