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Home › Articles › Multiples › Twins on Different Timetables

Twins on Different Timetables

How to Get Your Life (and Sanity) Back on Track

By Renee Roberson

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If the feeding and changing demands and erratic sleep schedules weren't enough for new parents to juggle, try multiplying that arrangement by two. Most parents spend the first six months of their new baby's life trying to establish good eating and sleeping habits while trying to catch up on sleep in between. But for parents of twins, establishing those types of routines requires even more work, particularly when the babies develop completely opposite schedules.

So what's the best way for new parents of twins to reclaim their sanity?

Tandem Timing

Pam Freiberg remembers the difficulty of her twins' first months at home as vividly as if it were yesterday. "I actually became physically ill trying to nurse them both on demand," the Chesterfield, Mo., resident says. "My doctor said that wasn't going to work; I needed to figure something out."

Freiberg's girls each weighed over 7 pounds when they were born so she had to make an executive decision on their feeding schedules. She nursed them both at the same time and began waking whichever one was asleep so the twins could do everything, even diaper changing, at the same time.

"Most parents find that keeping the twins on a schedule and feeding them one right after the other works best," says Dr. Sessions Cole, chief medical officer and director of Newborn Medicine at St. Louis Children's Hospital. "You can approach this in two ways. The first way is to allow one twin to awaken, feed him and then feed the second baby, even if it means waking him or her to feed. The other way is to maintain them on a schedule. Most twins will start out on an every-three-hour schedule, bumping to every four hours once the pediatrician is comfortable they are gaining enough weight."


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