Not the arnie film.

Found out last week I’m going to be a dad to identical twins. It’s our first kids and at 34 we didn’t think it was going to happen. I’ve not stopped smiling so any tips or advice from twin families? Heard some people say it’s easier and some say it’s harder

Congrats. Wifes best mate has identical twin girls. So so much work. Bedtime routine used to take hours as they’d keep waking each other up. It’ll be character building that’s for sure..

Congratulations.

Who makes triple bikes?

Congratulations!

Congratulations! Best of British to ya – one at a time is hard enough (but amazing!).

Congratulations.. will be awesome!!

sleep is so overrated until you dont have enough of it…

Congratulations!

Can’t offer any advice on twins, or even just the one yet, we’re off for our 20 week scan tomorrow. I’m scared stiff and excited in equal measure at the moment!

Thanks everyone. Good luck momo. Its amazing seeing the scan. Brings it to a whole new level of reality.

It’s fun and as your first anyway you won’t know any different.

Ours start year 3 tomorrow.

Ohh, and as they grow and develop, don’t compare them or treat them as ‘The Twins’. They are and always will be two individuals.

Weve got 2 boys 4&6 and just had twins this summer, nearly 4 months now so things settling

But…..

Pregnancy is tough on mum, she will become huge!
they come early and weights can be lower, can mean extra time in hospital etc
there’s a lot of pressure on mothers regarding the perfect pregnancy, birth, Breast feeding, etc that us blokes don’t necessarily get so be extra supportive, talk it through together, twins limit your options a bit in that regard

We got a Tommy tipee prep machine to help make bottles and top up Breast feeds or my wife would constantly have a child clamped to her

We try and do everything at once to get them in synch, feeding, sleeping, nappy change etc, even if they don’t seem to need it, just makes life easier, otherwise you’ll never get anything done

At first they slept together in the same moses basket, which was fine for the first couple of months, but now they need one each

Check out double buggies; side by side is good but you need wide doors at home to g wheel it in, one in front of the other is easier to get round shops & narrow pavements, you’ll also need 2 car seats, bouncy chairs (baby bjorns are good) eBay is your friend, aldi for nappies

Also, sleep now, have long lie-ins, savour some peaceful, calm time with your wife, make love, travel, for soon that part of your life will be a memory you can’t even conjour up when you get 5 minutes to close your gritty feeling, sleep deprived eyes…. before the crying starts again

Just kidding it’s ace
Here’s Eleanor mistaking Brandon’s head for a boob

[video]http://vimeo.com/181543989[/video]

aldi for nappies

And wipes.

When Kimbers and I agree, you just know it’s right! 🙂

When they get a little older, please don’t dress them identically. It looks shite.

Congratulations!

Same as all kids, some are easier in some ways and tougher in others, and different parents find some aspects easier to cope with than others. With twins there’s more scope for that combination not to work out in your favour. Our boys (now 3) are wonderful, but I have said on a number of occasions that those early months were by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It doesn’t matter though, you get no choice but to tough it out. Pray you get a couple of good eaters and sleepers and you’ll be fine (ours both had v bad reflux so were neither, but that’s fairly unusual).

Definitely line up extra help. With no grandparents readily on hand we tried to cope with just the two of us and it doesn’t work long-term. If you have family nearby you’ll be fine, otherwise think now about who you can call upon to come over the odd night to help outnumber them. We ended up having to throw some money at it for a night nurse. Not what we wanted, but it bought us some sanity and rest. Best ££ I’ve ever parted with.

Also Amazon Prime if you’re not already, and sign up to Subscribe & Save for regular delivery of nappies (you can alter the size as they grow), wipes, tissues, kitchen roll, nappy cream and a bunch of other stuff you never knew existed and don’t want to have to remember not to run out of.

Then sit back and enjoy! I guarantee whatever the circumstances it’ll be the best thing that ever happened.

girls, boys or identical girl and boy…..errr? 😀

congrats

Congratulations! Seriously though, how will you know which is which?

They’re not mine but I’ve got identical twins working for me just now. They look absolutely the same- same haircuts, even similiar clothes- and sound the same but one of them’s super organised and reliable but a bit too shy to do the job we do, and the other is chaos personified and totally untrustworthy but has exactly the right outgoing bullshit to do the job we do. This makes me want to kill them both, all the time. Twins are weird tbh.

When they get a little older, please don’t dress them identically. It looks shite.

We have twins coming up to 8, I’m not sure which people told you it was easier LOL…

It does have a certain efficiency when they get to 4 or 5 though, unless you decide for more, we didn’t!

It will be a slog for 18 months but they will be the happiest years ever, we didn’t have any help in the early years BUT, my wife was fortunate enough to be able to take extended leave from work until they were almost 2, so that saved us a lot of cash on child care.

I ended up sleeping in the spare room in the week whilst my wife was up every 45 mins with the sleeping, feeding, changing routine…

I did all the cooking, housework etc. you become quite efficient as a family to get through it, something we are not now.

I know I am not selling it, but after 18 months it clicks into place and it will be Awesome.

People will stop you every 5 minutes in the park, shops etc… It will get waring!

Mine are not identical but sometimes they choose to dress the same for a laugh.

How do you know they’re identical?

Bizarrely, used to have the following conversation with multiple strangers:

“Are they twins?”
“Yes, a boy and a girl.”
“Are they identical?”
“….”

It will be tough, but a lot depends on how quickly they get into a routine, whether they sleep and feed at the right times and without faff. But you don’t have to go through it all again to get another one. I’m convinced that having a 2-year-old and a newborn is harder.

I think the identical/non-identical thing relates to shared placenta, rather than appearance or sex. Our friends have got non-identical girls and you couldn’t imagine 2 more different kids, although they are usually dressed the same! Looks like flipping hard work but they are such a pair of characters now they’re almost 2yrs old. Our first is now 3 months old and that has been hard enough!

Ohh, and as they grow and develop, don’t compare them or treat them as ‘The Twins’. They are and always will be two individuals.

This

Oh and huge congratulations

Isn’t it to do with one fertilised egg splitting (identical) or two eggs being fertilised simultaneously (non-identical)?

Is it true that in all identical twins one is always left handed?

Yep 2 eggs for non identical

Hence this fascinating bit of biology(is more common in the wider animal kingdom)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/09/twins-with-different-fathers-born-in-vietnam

Of course, forgot that you can spot the difference in membranes and placenta even at the early scan. Probably easier to spot, in fact.

My mate Ronnie the Shagger once regaled us with the tale of the threesome he had with a girl he was seeing and her twin.

I asked him….”How did you tell them apart when you were all rolling about on the bed?”

“It was easy” he said, “Her brother has a moustache”

Whilst all twins sharing a placenta are identical, not all identical twins share a placenta.

Is it true that in all identical twins one is always left handed?

Don’t know about that, but if one egg splits on or around the 10th day after fertilisation, you get ‘mirror image’ twins – one left handed, the other right, one cuts their first tooth on one side of the mouth, the other twin the opposing side, etc etc etc

Ohh, and you can get identical twins of different sexes.

More here

hahahaha. 😀 good luck mate. Book annual leave from to coincide with the birth,as much time as you can get off. The first month will be a nightmare so get ready. My tip is, babies can only handle 2 stimuli so hold them to your shoulder, pat on the back, bump them up n down gently and say shhh shhh repeatedly in their ear to get them to stop crying. There are videos on youtube of someone saying shhh shhh on repeat for an hour. 😀 good luck

Another great tip we were given was to keep a feeding/changing diary as you *WILL* forget who had what done and when.

Then look back on it in three years and wonder how on earth you actually managed it…

Double Duty Daily Care Diary

Feed them both at the same time. Hopefully they will sleep in sync too.

Our boys are nearly six now. Bit difficult for a while, but as they get older they do seem to play with each other well.

Go for a one behind the other buggy rather than a side by side.

Don’t dress them the same, although ours are not identical, they both have their own clothes and will not wear each others.

Good luck, bit tricky at first, but soon settles down.

We found the best buggy to be an Out n About Nipper

Packs down quite small, is relatively lightweight and is very easy to maneuvere. It also fits through almost all standard doors.

We started out with a huge tank of a front/back one (with removable car seats and cots etc) which was fine for the first 6 months but we soon wanted to change to something less cumbersome.

Mountain Buddy Duet was our chariot of choice – slimmest we could find and the only one that would squeeze down the passageway to the back of our terraced house.

Congrats, I think we all look forward to when you find out which one is the evil one (hint: goatee).

We have twins coming up to 8, I’m not sure which people told you it was easier LOL…

lol.

Feed them both at the same time. Hopefully they will sleep in sync too.

Good luck with that one!

We have twin boys. Just celebrated their 10th birthday with a day’s uplift in Les Gets (they did the same for their 9th mind you). We also have a younger one so it can’t have been that bad 🙂

> Take all the help you are offered.
> Enjoy the ride! (It’s like a roller-coaster. Exciting, fun, unpredictable and scary)
> You will never be ready.
> Pretty much forget everything else for the first year or so.
> They will probably come at least a month early
> Buy shares in things called “wet wipes”. You will now have them in every room in your house for the foreseeable future
> It will be more work even in the pregnancy for your OH. Her body has to do twice the work it does with a single pregnancy so your support will be crucial.
> Enjoy a clean toilet that is regularly flushed while you can.
> +ve? twins mean that there is always one there for you.
> -ve? twins mean that there is ALWAYS one there for you 🙂

good luck & Congratulations!!

djglover and ade have it…

We have twins just turned 9 now. First two years are a blur but i remember a few things;

Do the rounds on supermarket nappy offers. That can save a decent amount of money when you’re going through 90 nappies a week

If breastfeeding, get one of those pumps as well. it’s good to build up a spare load of milk which you can freeze or you can give your partner a break in the night and do some bottle feeds with stuff previously collected.

Be prepared to be stopped a lot in the street and asked about them – this never bothered me but the question “Did you have IVF?” used to irk me. We didn’t but if we had gone through the whole ordeal of IVF I’m not sure id want to talk to strangers about it.

If you stick with just two then the benefits really do come. My lads have similar interests and activities and so weekends are quite straightforward whereas my friends who have, say, a 9 and a 6yr old run around like blue arsed flies taking them to different clubs, activities and parties. Also they are much better at keeping themselves entertained than other friends with kids of differing ages I’ve noticed.

Best of friends 95% of the time……. BUT boy does it kick off when they aint.

Oh, and they will come early. Scary but the hospital staff are awesome. Ours arrived mega early so we got all of that.

Good luck!

Ohh and join TAMBA – it only costs £2.25 a month (or that’s what it still costs us – we continue to support the charity) as you will get some pretty decent discounts from most of the main retailers out there (often you have to ask) such as Early Learning, Boots, Mothercare etc.

Ohh, and this is the behemoth travel system we started out with http://blog.abc-design.de/en/product-presentation/triple-award-winner-zoom/

Congratulations! Ours just started school yesterday and it’s been an awesome 4 years. It will be hard for the first two years, just get used to not having enough sleep, it may not feel like it at the time but it does get easier!
As a Dad you get thrown in the deep end from day one but as thers are your first kids you won’t know any different. The benifits of getting to help out with the feeding gives you a good bond with your kids really early.
As others have said, accept all the help that’s offered, sleep whenever you can, Nursery will clean you out finacially for a while but you will cope and you’ll never be fully prepared for it so try not to stress about it too much.
You’re in for a great ride!

We have twin children and twin grandchildren. It’s great fun. Crippling to begin with but so much fun as they grow.

Thanks for all the advice peeps. Got to move house in a few years time as we only have two bedrooms at the moment. Luckily I have got a mondeo estate so should be big enough