Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Twins!

After another blogger recently posted about their twins, a friend of mine suggested that I do the same. So here is my Twin post, based off of the original posters format:


What was your twin pregnancy like?

To sum it up in two words: Long and Short. It was long because I suffer from terrible morning sickness each time I'm pregnant, and it started super early with the twins, lasted pretty much my entire pregnancy, and was even worse then it was with my singletons. Besides the morning sickness, there were the increased number of doctors visits. All twin pregnancies are considered high-risk, which meant my doctor had me coming in so often that I almost felt like I was there more than I was at work. And to top it all off, I started having consistent contractions at around 32 weeks, they increased in frequency and intensity until at 34 weeks I was having them every three minutes, which lasted two more weeks until I finally delivered at 36 weeks. 
How did you choose names for them?

We had originally picked out one boy name and one girl name when we found out I was pregnant. As it went for all of our kids, I chose the first name, and my husband chose the middle name. When we found out it was twin girls, we split in half and I named baby A (Ella Elizabeth) and he named baby B (Alexa Vivian).

Do they sleep together, or apart?

Together. When they were itty-bitty, they shared a bassinet, but eventually they grew out of that and while they each had their own crib, they shared a room. After they grew out of their cribs they shared a King size bed for about a year, and finally they now have a bunk bed. 

Did you feed them simultaneously?

Okay, don't judge me, but - I have never been successful at breastfeeding. I tried and tried and tried, and my kids could never latch on. For my first son they ended up giving me a breast shield that helped make it easier, but for the rest of the kids they wouldn't. With the twins I wasn't producing enough milk for them anyway, so I ended up pumping so I could measure the amount of milk they were getting so I would know how much formula I needed to supplement                 with. It wasn't easy, but it worked.
Do you dress them matching?

Despite the wonderful people who love buying them matching outfits, we rarely - if ever - dress them alike. They are two individual people, and we have always wanted them to develop their own personalities and tastes. 
How do you afford purchasing multiples items? 

By God's provision. We had lots of people give us their old baby stuff or purchase items for us. Thankfully we still had the high chair and crib from our singletons so that cut down on some of the bigger expenses. We also didn't have two of everything. We only had on baby bouncer, and really only of our girls liked it anyway. We did have two swings, but only one bassinet (as I said, they shared it when they were tiny). 
How did you tell them apart?


Generally this wasn't hard for us since they weren't identical, but for anyone who wasn't around them very often, Alexa was always identified as the one without any hair, as Ella was born with a head full of hair and Alexa didn't have anything more than peach fuzz for about 2 years.


Photos and a video of the twins:










Birthday Photos

Birth

1


2

3

4

Videos

Reading a book
On the slide

2 comments:

  1. So loved this!!!! My favorite picture is the one of them asleep in the hospital crib! So cute and precious!!

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  2. I like them all. :) But I guess I'm partial.

    ReplyDelete