Anyone else pregnant with twins - or more? Or anyone who has twins - or more - who wants to hold our hands...

[GettingBiggerBird]

Hoping to drag my fellow pregnant mums and those whose bodies have been recently or not-so-recently liberated over from our ante-natal thread. We're not as experienced as those on the d'y ever ones but a lot slower . And any new ladies please join us, here's the list so far:

PazzaPlusTwo: twin girls born April 28th 2008 - Anais and Carmen
Neenztwinz: twins born May 6 2008, Esther and Theo
Accessorizequeen: twins born Sept 27, Felix and Bridget - East Yorkshire
Merrymarigold: non id twins (girl and boy) born 22 Oct, Jude and Mirissa - Forest Gate, East London
jennyroper: id girl twins due dec 15th - New Zealand (but am proudly British)
Anjlix: id twin girls due 24 dec (37 weeks) - London, booked at St Thomas.
GBB: b/g twins due Dec 25 - Hackney, London
PBH: twin girls due 9 Jan 2009
MEL2005: twins due(40w)10th jan 2009, Norfolk
Pheonixnights:Non ID twins due 17th Jan
Ewemoo: id twins due end Jan 08
Tallulahbelle: twins due Jan 08
Nellstar: id twins due 18 Feb 2009 (well, that's 40 weeks)
Balamorybaby: twins due 11th March - East Sussex
Barbarella: triplets due 9th April 2009
Swerve: twins due 28 May 2009

In answer to any new ladies in November last year, I know its now Feburary but just joined mumsnet today have 5 children 3 girls and twin boys born 11th july 2008

Hi MUM41, how are things going with that impressive family? You're a veteran compared to most of us on here as far as your twins go.

Fran, my DTs have been very snotty too, and DS had green nappies again though since DD2 didn't, I assumed that means it was a bug rather than any problem with my milk - is that right? Nights had gone quite wrong but the last two have been good - DH has been doing the evening and letting me go to sleep for a few hours, not something I can expect him to do every day without having a breakdown but it's helped me see off a nasty bug and I feel relatively human again. Our routine is not quite as rigid as it might be - the only thing we are trying to do is mostly stick to three-hourly daytime feeding and doing things in the same order around bedtime. But then growth spurts and colds make that quite hard too!

Has anyone ventured out? I went out on my own but not with the babies yet. Hackney almost looks beautiful .

Thanks for the welcome notsobigbird strange when I first joined yesterday I was only able to view messages up to Nov last year, just logged on today and many more, tried to read as many as possible to see whats happening with other members in this very mad and rewarding world of familys with twins. I see some of you are still waiting for the big day brings back so many memories for me of last year, which by the way now seems a liftime ago so make the most of the rest and quiet you that you can and others who like myself still can not beleive I have twins after nearly 7 months, my face just hurts in the morning with the huge smile of pure happiness when I see there little faces with big big smiles in the morning thats a morning after them having around 12 hours of peaceful uninterupted sleep as they have done from around 12 weeks, I can't deny that makes life alot easier hope to get to know some of you sharing the same experiences, trials and tribulations of the coming weeks months and years

Hi MUM41plus5, goodness gracious, 3 girls then twins, I bet everyone says, 'you've got your hands full then', I get that with twins and a toddler. Anyway welcome to the thread. Lovely to hear that you're really enjoying your twins, gives me hope that things will be ok. I feel guilty for saying it but at the moment I keep thinking I wish I'd only had one baby at a time - I love them both dearly but I'm finding the sleep thing so difficult, getting them down for naps in the day and then coping with two waking in the night. So well done you for getting yours to sleep 12 hours at 12 weeks that's impressive. Did that just kind of happen naturally, or did you work to strict routine to get them there? What issues do you face with 7 month old twins?

Hi Mum41plus5, My dts are 4 and half weeks old and the sleep deprivation has now set in!! Would love to know how you got your two to sleep through at 12 weeks. My dts are still going about 3 hours between feeds. They are BF. I did have a couple of 4 hour gaps which was fab but it only happened a couple of times.

Fran - I know what you mean about having the babies seperatly. I keep thinking to myself how easy it must be to have 1 baby. However when my eldest two were babies I never found them easy!! I haven't bothered with a routine at all yet. Only that I feed them upstairs in the dark at nighttime. The rest of the time we are just flying by the seat of our pants!!! I had tears yesterday for the first time in ages. I had all 4 children at home, had had a bad night with the twins and felt exhausted. The babies were really unsettled all afternoon so I ended up in tears calling dh at 5.10 asking him to come home!! Thankfully mil came round at 6.30 so I went to bed for 2 hours. I felt a bit better after, bet I still have a few more tears over them though!!

On a lovely note - the dts are trying to smile. THey are so beautiful!!!

Phoenix, I have a friend with twin girls and asked when hers slept through and she said 6 weeks!!! I asked what she did and she had no idea...said she was lucky. She was indeed! Mine still don't at 15 weeks or so (I think they are, I have lost track now). Their excuse is that dd has reflux so can't eat a lot in one go, and also gets a lot of pain. Not sure what ds2's excuse is though! His colic got better around 12 weeks and is not nearly so sick now, though he puked a whole feed this morning all over my bed...grrrr...he hasn't done that for a while, I think it was the phlegm. They are generally only waking twice a night now, shame it is not at the same time. I have tried waking them when one wakes but they don't feed a lot and then just wake up when they had originally intended to!

Frang, glad boobs are better. I have found that expressing if they aren't feeding well keeps supply up whilst providing relief for sore boobs. You can freeze for a some nice day when you leave them with dh/ granny/ babysitter. Bronchiolitis sounds worse than it is...it's basically a cold virus which would just be a cold to us but it affects young babies airways so they find it hard to breathe and get this terrible cough with it too. Dd had it worse because of reflux so choked a lot and had a few 'blue' episodes (she was only 5 weeks, bless), went into hosp for a couple of days...but only took about 10 days to get over it. Still, they seem to get every cold going, so I think it did weaken them a bit, or is the original one recurring, not sure.

mum41 - woweeeeeeee. how old are your girls? do they help out? [wishful thinking for you!] what car do you have?!!! You can fill in a profile thing on mumsnet where you can put pics etc. as well. Would love to see some, and yours frang and phoenix. I do need to update my pics.

Smiles are the best, definitely makes life lovely...

Merry I have put pics on, and thought I'd made it so all mumsnetters could see them, not sure why it didn't work before, and not sure if you can see them now.

Hi all, lovely to sign in today and catch up on all the posts (I think thats what you call them) You'll have to forgive me as despite my career in office admin, thats prior my twins, I'm a little computer illiterate at the moment so not sure of some of the abbrieviations and web speak and I hope I won't offend anyone by shortening names
Pheonix, Frang and Merry, hello to you all and thanks for the warm welcome and Frang you probably have your hands more full than mine as my next up is my daughter who is 5 and in full time school, my next daughter is 15, she loves the her brothers but has a head full of other things such as exams and unfortunately boys and my eldest daughter is 18 and in full time employment and long term relationship so I do have lots of help and to all of you I can recomend the tamba book of twins for lots of practical advice and an insight into things to come the one message I think was clear was with twins routine is very important, and thats what we did with night times, we established routine, we even found if we were not getting them ready for bed by 6:30pm they became very grumpy as if to let us know and any night time contact was kept as low key as possible, it sounds silly but when we lay them down we always say a few words, sweet dreams etc etc as with all the girls and I think even this is part of the routine that settles them, I also think as some of you say, luck probably does play a part but like my health visitor says I am a very relaxed mum and this in turn makes for 2 contented babies, guess thats because I'm 41 and been there done that unfortunately though I think being bottle fed probably makes nights easier and I envy you ladies for being able to breast feed as I managed to for a couple of weeks before I had to return to hospital many times for an infection and due to great pain and several antibiotics and pain killers I had to go onto bottles a long story and yes I became very down because of it but I decided no piont in beating myself up about it and got on with enjoying being mum to twins as I think we can all agree is special oh can someone tell me how to do profile please

Oh Merry sorry, we did have a Lexus Rx400 which I loved and we stupidly thought it would be big enough what with the older ones not really wanting to come on day trips to the zoo but how wrong were we in able to get every one and (what we hadn't thuoght of) everything into a car we realised we needed a 7 seater and after looking at many we went for the chrystler grand voyager mainly due to the automatic sliding doors, don't have to drive around for hours now looking for a parking space with no one in the space next to us unfortunately feels like driving a bus but needs must

Merry, just seen your profile pics a boy and girl, realise now dd and ds am guessing darling daughter and darling son ?? they are gorgeous, you must be so pround going to get to look at more profiles later, as now, as I'm sure you all know, manic time of day, everyone wants feeding etc etc

Merry was just having a nose at your pics, Mirissa and Jude are so sweet. How old is their big brother - he's a real cutie.

MUM41 It's lovely to have someone more experienced on board, you do realise we will all be coming to you for advice now. (So here goes...) You're probably right about routine, I think that's what I need to work on. We're making progress on managing to mostly get them down by 7pm, which is great it gives me a wee while downstairs relaxing with husband before I go to bed. We had got to the stage where they were waking only once or twice for night feeds, but since they've been poorly it's been lots more and I'm fearing that bad habits are being formed. So what I was wondering was what did you do with your twins in the night? Did you have set times at which you fed them or did you just feed when they were hungry.

To set up a profile: click on MyMumsnet, then select set up public profile page and away you go. We look forward to seeing pic of you brood.

Poor you Pheonix, lack of sleep is a killer. I seem to end up in tears quite often and late in the afternoon babies can be quite fractious, especially if they haven't napped well that day. Do you have anyone to help you out in afternoons at all? After reaching crisis point at 5 and 6 weeks I managed to organise more help so things are bit more manageable, but I'm still finding it really tough though. I get too easily stressed when they both cry - need to be a bit calmer.

Anyway just gone 7:30, must nearly be my bedtime night all!

Mum41, welcome What a fantastic brood, 3 older girls and then twin boys. I have two older boys (5 & 2) then the dt's are boy/girl and 4 months. and NOT sleeping through anymore argggh. I had a few weeks of it, I guess I should be grateful. I don't think there's any rhyme or reason to night wakenings, dd largely sleeps through but last night I think ds3 disturbed her because I was slow getting to him and thus she fancied a small snack . I am gradually giving in to a bottle of formula at 5 because after being up mostly from 1am I'm shattered. DS3 just feeds & feeds but doesn't seem satisfied. Although I do think that what you eat and what time you eat it (as well as how much you drink) makes a huge difference to the night feedings. Whenever I'm not stuffing my face during the day, they're up a lot more at night.

frang, my ds1 is 3 years and 3 months. I need to put some more recent pics up, they are a lot cuter now they look like 'real babies', pudgy and sweet.

AQ, sorry you're not sleeping through anymore. Must be a nightmare with taking care of the other 2 as well...thanks for giving me an excuse to stuff my face all day. Please tell me lots of fatty food also helps them sleep longer!!! We'll start getting our family meals from KFC.

M & J must be going through their 'sleeping better' phase...they wake twice a night now, which is bliss compared to before. Also I think their 5am feed could be dropped and they could hang on till 7am, if I can be bothered/ put up with them crying for a couple of days - to train them (I can't). AQ, my ds1 went through a bad sleeping phase from around 18weeks till he was on solids, so yours will soon be eating I guess. Wow!

Hi to all mums expecting twins. I have a 4 year old daughter and 1 year old twins (boy & girl)and it is wonderful. When pregnant, I heard a lot of scary delivery stories, but to put your minds at ease, I had a vaginal delivery (37 weeks) with gas and air (too late for epidural, just got to hosp in time!)My son was born first weighing 6IB12oz, then 45mins later my daughter (delivered feet first) was 6IB2oz. My biggest bit of advice would be if you suspect at any stage you are in labour, get to the hospital because for me I went from a few back niggles to needing to push within an hour. Good luck to all.

just spent a while texting replies to you ladies and went to post and it all just dissapeared not much time now but....

Fran I hope your twins are feeling better today, I know a little how you feel, mine had chicken pocs couple of weeks before xmas after my daughter caught them at school, hard not to worry even though we know its a common illness and thanks for profile tips, think I managed it today, its a new laptop so downloaded disc for speed but when all downloaded can send of my older 2, if they let me, teenagers hey

AQ, 3 boys hey, looks like I'll be coming to you for advice, especially for potty training

Hi Karen, my boys were born 7lb 1oz and 50 seconds later 5lb 13oz by c section but that was because I had previous sections, I was having contractions from around 35 weeks so they gave me jab for lungs but they were still holding in there at 37 weeks when I had my planned section so I agree if there are no other issues other than its twins then just take every day as it comes

Hi Mum41plus5, nice to hear another safe delivery story. The only difference with my twin pregnancy was the sheer size of me by the end (but that was also added to by my eating for 3 mentality!!).

you and me both Karen, all made sense when they were born and I realised I was carrying around a stone of baby, didn't take too long to lose the 3 stone of chocolate, take aways and milk, couldn't get enough of the white stuff and it had to be full fat

Hi. I've put new pics on my profile ...

Gosh, I am SO RELIEVED not to be pregnant anymore, or ever again in fact.

Ahh, lovely pics Merry, they look like happy little bundles. I put more pics on, can you tell me if it's worked - can you see them?

MUM41 Just a little tip - if you have a big message to post, copy it before you click on postmessage, if you do lose it you can just re paste it in the message box. It's really annoying to spend your precious time catching up with everyone only to lose it all - I've done it lots of times.

Hi Karen good to hear positive birth stories, when I was pregnant I was trying to find stories of people who had had natural twin births, and sadly on line there were very few - lots of scary stories that worried me. Fortunately mine went really well, not as quick as yours, but too quick to have epidural and so delivered with gas and air. Was really positive experience - I can say that now that I've forgotten just how painful it was!

Hi Frangipani74, I know what you mean about not many positive stories online. I also agree that you soon put the pain behind you, let's face it, there's not a lot of time to think about it when there are two babies to be fed (and trying to reason with a young daughter who wants to feed one of them!!)

frangi, i can't see your profile at all...

hi all

merry never again?, thats what I said every time made sure this time though that I cant change my mind, if you know what I mean new pics are lovely

Fran I cant see your profile either, would love too and thanks for tip, will copy before sending now

have added a couple more pics as downloaded more now onto laptop, better stop now though as could be adding for ever as I'm sure all us proud, happy mums could, although dh, (think thats short for husband?) not too happy at pic of him on net will add of my older two when downloaded.
Its nice to know faces of the children we all discuss

I've tried once more - just realised that I hadn't made my profile public. Still not sure if you can see pics as it doesn't say Frangipani Photos at the bottom of my profile. Probably me being technically inept.

I can see them Fran! Lovely

Merry, yours were too although I've seen some on FB already of course. Email me!

Will catch up a bit more on the weekend, trying to get some sleep now....