Questions I Get Most Often (and Some Other Ramblings)

Are they twins???
Yep, sure are. I know they don’t look that much alike but they’re twi...

But he’s so much BIGGER than she is...
Well he’s big for a boy and she’s small for a girl.

He must be older. How much older is he?
He’s one minute older.

Obviously that one minute is why James is nearly 4 pounds heavier. While it’s true that the first twin out in a vaginal delivery (Twin A) is usually bigger, any differences after the first few weeks due to birth order go away. I’m not sure what people who ask me about it are thinking - that James came out two months early and fattened up while Julia luxuriated inside my womb eating a spa diet of tofu, arugula, and tomato wraps?


But let’s go back to my twins not looking alike...
While James and Julia looked more alike when they were first born with their blond widow’s peaks and wrinkly newborn faces, they don’t look much alike now. Both are pale with blue eyes but the similarities end there. James has dirty blond hair and definitely looks like my side of the family while Julia has medium brown hair and definitely looks like her Daddy. I think it’s fun that they look so different and we get to see such different genetic combinations in them.


They actually look alike the first month...


Stretching out on the warming table, just after birth, the babies still look alike because they look like every other wrinkled Caucasian newborn. (1 hour)

Kickin' it in the car seats and showing off matching blond widow's peaks. (2 weeks)


Still looking pretty much alike the second month...


According to James Lipton, the appropriate term of venery is "an armload of babies." (1 month)


Julia and James practice their "Walk Like an Egyptian" poses. (1 month)


Different lengths and head shapes by 4 months...



James and Julia go head to head... Uh oh. I've been spotted. (4 months)


But then by 6 months you can really see the different in the twins' hair color...

The awesomeness of Jean Diapers. (6 months)


Most twin moms I know have babies that definitely look more alike. I really only know two sets of twins that look less alike than ours. They would be my friend Kathy who has one twin, Ava, who looks Sicilian like her daddy with dark hair, big dark eyes, and a stocky build (Kathy's words, not mine) and the other twin, Bella, who looks Irish like Kathy with red hair, blue eyes, and a build like a beanpole. (No, this Kathy is not actually me.) One other interesting set of twins I know is my friend Tesin’s. She is Chinese and her husband is Irish, and one twin, Kimai, looks totally Chinese, and the other, Caitlin, looks totally Irish. By chance they happened to give the Irish name to the Irish-looking baby.


Least alike twin competition winners: Ava and Bella.


And tied with Ava and Bella for least alike: Kimai and Caitlin.

Surprisingly I’ve only gotten the boneheaded question asking whether James and Julia are identical or fraternal once, which I’ve heard boy/girl twin parents get asked a lot. Incidentally, Mark and I watched a National Geographic special on twins and apparently you can have identical boy/girl twins. As I understand it, all twins undergo mutations so they’re never completely alike. In very rare instances, one of those mutations can affect the chromosome that determines the sex of the baby.


Do twins run in your family?
Actually, they do. My mother’s first cousin Beverlee was the surviving twin at birth. And my father’s Aunt Veronica had identical twins, Karen and Susan. On Mark’s side there are two sets of Pilloff twins: Grandpa Herschel’s first cousin, Lawrence had twins as did another first cousin's (Benson) son Steve.

My cousin Beverlee is on the far right in the first picture and on the left in the second with her daughter, Debbie. Incidentally, she looks so much like my mom they could be sisters. (In fact I've heard stories about my mom borrowing Beverlee's ID. I wonder whatever for...)

Here's my mom for comparison. She only wears over-the-top floral hats when she's out for tea.

However, this probably had nothing to do with it since our fertility clinic had me take a drug to increase the possibility of my getting pregnant. Thankfully the first drug they gave me - Clomid - worked so I didn’t have to go down the path of self-injectable drugs or IVF. My nurse told me that taking Clomid would give me a 8% chance of getting pregnant with multiples. I was given an ultrasound after taking Clomid and two eggs were visible. Then I was given a steroid shot in my butt (not too unlike Jose Canseco) with doctor’s orders to go make a baby the following night. (Side note: the month before this attempt, FIVE eggs were visible and I told the nurse I did not want to try that month. The doctor was disappointed with my decision when he found out, which makes me think: bad doctor.)

Asking if twins run in your family is a loaded question (as mentioned in this awesome, awesome video that’s a must see for twin parents). A lot of people who ask this are clueless, but there are others that are surreptitiously asking to find out if you had ferility help. I was actually asked this during my Jeopardy audition in front of a room full of people, and sort of stammered an answer ("no, well yes, but no...").

Advice for Parents-to-Be of Multiples

I've been thinking a lot lately about what advice specific to twins I would give to parents-to-be of multiples since my friend, Helene, is pregnant with twins. Here goes. (These posts might also be of interest.)


1) Be ready early.

Whenever anyone tells me they're expecting twins the first thing I say is "Not to scare you but..." And what follows is this: "be ready early." Twins tend to come about a month early, and among twin moms I know, easily over half had pre-term labor scares that led to about two months of bed rest. Just like me! Once you're on bed rest, it's hard to get the nursery ready or do all the other nesting projects you had planned (and once you give birth it's impossible), so in the sage words of Larry the Cable Guy, "git-R-done."

"Work on that nursery! I mean, git-R-done!"

And bed rest actually isn't actually that bad. I had a laptop so I didn't have a problem with boredom. What bothered me the most was the isolation.


2) Join a twins group.

I joined Gemini Crickets, the twins organization for Silicon Valley. (There is also Mid-Peninsula Parents of Multiples.) Their dues are $40 a year but I made up for the membership fee even before I gave birth by getting free or greatly reduced gear from other members. Plus, they have several garage sales a year for twin parents. (At one of their garage sales I scored a $5 music table and cute outfits for $1 each). The best thing though about being in a twins group is their online forum. I've gone there to ask all sorts of baby-related questions. And it's a good place to get playdates with other twin moms.


3) Notebooks are your friend.

Keep a notebook to write down feedings, diaperings, etc. Trust me, with two babies you will lose track. This is really only necessary until they eat on a schedule, but until then it's hard enough to remember on your own, let alone not know what happened during the shift before yours when you were asleep. It also helps in answering doctor questions the first few months about how much the babies are drinking and how many wet and poopy diapers they're producing.


4) Masking tape is also your friend.

Put masking tape on bottles so you can write on it to keep track of whose is whose and how much is inside.


What the inside of our refrigerator used to look like. Bottles go in the middle, formula on the left, milk goes on the right. Chinese takeout and pickles apparently went on the far left.


5) Do the best you can with nursing but don't kill yourself.

I was lucky my mom lived with us for several months and my mother-in-law came to visit often because I wouldn't otherwise have been able to give my babies breastmilk. For something that's so natural, nursing is surprisingly hard! Babies that are premature aren't as good as sucking and that was the case with my brood. Working with a lactation consultant (a lot!) who weighed my babies at 10 minute intervals during an hour of nursing, she determined that each one needed to be nursed for 20-30 minutes (after that they were pretty much just hanging out on my boobs), followed by a bottle. After that I would pump. Let me tell you, in the early days babies often need to be fed every 2 hours. That meant by the time I finished the first cycle of feeding each baby and pumping it was pretty much time to start all over again. Thankfully I had a lot of help. I bought a twin nursing pillow but was rarely able to get them latched and keep them latched. It was definitely a two person effort, but with babies that latch well it's definitely doable.

In case you're wondering, Julia (my better sucker) rejected the breast at 2 1/2 months and James at 4. After that I pumped in all my spare moments. I can remember not eating lunch until 3:30 on more than one occasion because when I did have a spare moment earlier in the day, I pumped. And I pumped and I pumped and I pumped - even during my Jeopardy taping (well, not during MY episode) - for nine months. I had an undiagnosed infection that made pumping very painful so I had to keep lessening the suction accordingly, and then eventually I was only making 1/6 of one baby's total milk for the day, and decided it was no longer worth it.


Sometimes I felt like I birthed a litter.

6) Buy your maternity pants at Motherhood with the comfy full belly panel.

I bought some maternity jeans at Old Navy early on and had to abandon them after a few months because they did not get big enough for a big ol' twin belly.

It's not good when you have to use office supplies to keep your pants together, though to be fair the pair on the left weren't maternity pants. On the right are my Old Navy pants - which were good at the time - but I outgrew them two months after I bought them.

It may look like I'm wearing granny panties but i'm oh so comfortable.

7) Your babies will be dirty but it's not a bad thing.


Julia may look cute but she stinks to high heaven.


You can crawl but you can't hide from the stench, James!

Don't feel bad if you only bathe your babies once a week. Early on, even with another person to help you, it's hard to fit in baths and have the energy to bathe your babies between the constant feedings and the crying and the holding. When you're on your own it's very difficult to bathe two. In theory you could use two bath seats, but that only works if you have a shower curtain instead of shower doors (no dice in our house). And if you bathe them one at a time you can't keep an eye on the other baby. So I've decided to just wait until the weekends when Mark can help. They're babies - despite my captions on the pictures above, they don't smell. It's not like they do triathlons between poopings. You really just have to worry about keeping their creases clean (and you can clean the neck fat rolls with a washcloth outside the bath if you need to.) An informal poll among twin moms I know shows that a majority opts to bathe their munchkins once a week. It'll be nice when my twins are a little older and they can both sit in the tub safely, because I feel bad now keeping them from something they enjoy.


8) Schedule!

After the on-demand feedings of the first several months are over, definitely put your twins on a schedule. This is why: if they don't nap at the same time you never get a break. (This is one reason singleton parents are really lucky - if their little one doesn't want to nap at a certain time, they can just try again later. With twin parents, if you put both babies down and only one sleeps, it's the "Oh crap!" heard round the world.)


9) Feed them at the same time.

The other reason to put your twins on a schedule: you want them to have their feedings at the same time. For a long while, I resisted feeding them at the same time, thinking that when I'd take the bottles away to burp my little ones (a process that could take several minutes with my babies since they were prone to spitting up) there would be a lot of crying. But actually, once they had 1/3 to 1/2 a bottle, they were fairly content to wait for their turn to burp.

How to bottle feed them at the same time? Two Boppies. I know you'll be tempted to get the giant twin nursing pillow, and by all means, get that. But Boppies are wonderful for so many purposes, one of which is to prop up two babies and then hold a bottle in each one's mouth. The first half of the feeding, I'd turn on the TV and it was beautifully silent in the apartment (except for the TV of course) for about six minutes. (For Mark's advice for making large batches of formula, see the comment at the end of this post.)

This is how it's done! (Thanks, Stacy, for the photo!)

I returned home and had to piece together what happened with Mark and the babies. (Something like: they fell asleep on the sofa in the Boppies but Mark needed to leave the room and didn't want them to fall off the sofa.)


At a park playdate you can also feed your twins at the same time by putting them in their car seats. For this visit I employed some cheap child labor.

What to do if their feeding times are significantly off? Go on a walk! Miraculously, babies forget they're hungry while they're on a walk, so the baby who woke up early won't fuss that they're eating later. (What to do if their feeding times are off by an hour and a half and they have feedings every three hours? Give up. Your day is officially ruined.)


10) Keep your sanity by getting a Mother's Helper.

Get a mother's helper during the first six months, maybe even nine months. There were times the first six months - especially the first three - when my mom and I would be in tears at the end of the day, and there were two of us! A mother's helper takes care of babies as well as household tasks. It meant my mom and I could take a break, one of us could go run errands, we could eat a leisurely lunch at home, etc. I found our mother's helpers through the Alpha Phi sorority at Santa Clara University, and I cracked the whip over them for three hours stretches a couple times a week at a rate of $10-12 / hour. A bargain for my sanity.

11) Get an Exersaucer and a Jumperoo. I would put the babies in these for only 15 minutes at a time (since there were studies that these contraptions might impede their physical development), and it would give me peace to scarf down my lunch.


Both babies occupied means Mommy gets to eat.


Gear (obviously borrow and buy stuff used as much as you can):

I used the book Twin Sense to help figure out how many items I might need of certain vital items. (It also has useful advice on how to set up two babies to nurse at the same time while on your own.)


Julia's finished pop-up books and has moved on to reading about how to raise herself.

I'm not going to go through the entire baby gear list (obviously you know you need diapers and such), but for some you're not sure of, here's my input:

-Boppy pillows (2)
-Washcloths (20). Besides being useful for baths, when the little ones started eating solid foods (3 times a day) and snacks (2 times a day), I found I needed to wash their faces afterwards nearly every time.
-Crib sheets (4) and waterproof pads (4).
-Lightweight Blankets (12). They're good for propping up the middle of Boppy pillows for feedings, rolling up to form around baby heads in car seats, and rolling up and putting next to sleeping babies when they're first born (I later discovered SwaddleMe and preferred them for swaddling.).
-A really big lightweight blanket to cover the whole stroller (1). This is good for meals out or during walks to help them sleep the first several months. It's also good as a photo backdrop on a bed.
-Thermometer (1)


Blankets for going around the car head rest.

Big ticket items:

-Pack N Play (1) They can both sleep in here at first. Later you can move one/both to cribs. We didn't use the bassinets long but it was only because we preferred the Pack N Play. (Note: I bought one with a diaper change station and a Newborn Napper but since both twins slept here and I couldn't access those items, those options were wasted.) My little ones both slept in the Pack N Play for several months until James started rotating in the middle of the night to rest his head against Julia's feet. I was worried she might kick him so at that point I separated them.
-Crib (2) You don't need this right away and of course you'll eventually want two. Some babies sleep in the same crib for a long time. Then there are mine who keep each other awake and now have to sleep in separate rooms.
-Double Snap N Go stroller frame (1) and SnugRide car seats (2) since they'll snap into the frame
-Bob Duallie Jogging Stroller (1) for when they're older (if you're inclined to jog)


My newborns sharing the Pack N Play. And keeping the blanket industry alive.

You want to make as many "stations" as you can, where they will entertain themselves (usually for about 10 minutes if you're lucky). You only need one of each of these stations because the other twin can be using another station. The only exception is an activity mat. Two activity mats are preferable since they spend the most time here of any station the first several months. Your stations could include: activity mat, bouncy chair, swing, the floor with toys, car seat with arch of toys; and later, Exersaucer, Jumperoo, and Bumbo seat with tray.


James playing on his quilt.


The babies in their Bumbo seats. (I wish I'd gotten the Bumbos with trays so they could play with toys instead of dropping them and instead grabbing their sister's foot for amusement. Then again I got them free through Gemini Crickets so I can't really complain.)

Breastfeeding: Meet the "Twins"...

When you have infants it seems everyone asks (sometimes when you barely know them!) whether or not you're breastfeeding. I think I probably get that question more since I'm a twin mom. I think it's part of the carnival freakshow they envision of a mother nursing two babies at the same time. Using my special twin nursing super powers pillow I have fed them both at the same time - and there's nothing that makes me feel more like I birthed a litter - but it's also really tricky. It might have been easier if they were better at latching (I never got to that part) but whenever I did it, it was a two person operation with someone helping me get the twins on and off the pillow, burping them, and me trying to get them latched back on since they'd continually slide off.

Me and my litter. (When Julia would breastfeed she liked it so much she looked like she was going to tear her eyes out.)

The aforementioned twin nursing pillow. (That's not me.)


Mark can feed two people at once-- as long as he is one of them

Most mothers with twins stop breastfeeding early. There are a lot of reasons - while nursing you can't take care of the non-feeding baby (who invariably needs attention). There's the lack of time to pump (something about caring for two babies). There's also the higher rate of prematurity among twins. That means a higher likelihood to bottle feed and use formula to increase birth weights the first weeks or months. Knowing the odds were against me from the start, I was determined to breastfeed for as long as possible.


Feeding formula to Julia by syringe while in the hospital

The first month I would try to nurse the babies but they would cry and wouldn't try to nurse. They already preferred the bottles they received when born at 35 1/2 weeks. Luckily I was able to pump enough so that all their bottles were 100% milk. (Currently their bottles are 50% milk, 50% formula but more on that later.) Then near the end of the month, my mom had the bright idea to give them a pacifier to calm them down until they were ready to nurse. That actually worked!

I continued to go to Kaiser's Newborn Club over the next several months to meet with Sue the lactation consultant in order to set feeding allotments. (Most babies there are in their first week. We needed more help. After going there throughout the first month, the director told me they had been worried about the babies and their weight gain at our first visit, but they weren't anymore. In Eastern European accented English she exclaimed, "James is a horse!") The nurses would weigh the babies before and after breastfeeding to measure how much they were taking in.


Turns out Boppy nursing pillows are also great for sleeping (despite the tag on them that says "Not for Sleeping!")

Unfortunately the babies were always lazy at sucking because they were premature, so even when they were at their breastfeeding best, my schedule was to nurse James 20 minutes (he would not take in significantly more after that) and give the other 2/3 of his feeding via bottle. Julia was my little "Margaret Latcher" by comparison and I would nurse her for 30 minutes and give her the other 1/3 of her feeding via bottle. That's a lot of time invested in feeding! That doesn't even touch the surface of burping either. Burping took forever with their immature systems - sometimes it would take 10 minutes for a burp and we'd burp them 3 times. Once, after I fed, burped, and changed each baby it was literally time to start all over again. I wished they could nurse for a whole feeding - it would have been much more efficient than dealing with pumping, making bottles, etc. (In fact I currently have an infection on my hand and dermatitis in three other spots due to all the hot water and soap).

What the inside of our refrigerator looks like. Bottles go in the middle, formula on the left, milk goes on the right. Chinese takeout and pickles apparently go on the far left.

Julia started rejecting the breast at the end of February (at 2 1/2 months). I tried and tried to reintroduce it to her but she was pretty set (read: she screamed) on having a bottle since that was easier for her. (The Newborn Club liked to tell us how breastfeeding for babies is so much work for them it's like running a marathon.) I cried. Even though I continued to pump I knew that meant less milk would now be produced by me and consumed by her. Studies have shown the benefits of breastfeeding including everything from lower rates of obesity to fewer allergies. Breastfed infants apparently have a gain of five IQ points, so I'm always thinking the babies are losing IQ points thanks to me. Plus, breastfeeding strengthens the mother-baby bond. Society had also brainwashed me into thinking formula was equivalent to poison so I was heartbroken when I had to start giving the babies formula.

Mark feeds formula (horrors!) to James the first week at home.

Something worse than formula: Mark introduces James to Coke. Don't worry-- he didn't actually drink any. (But true story: The other day Mark asked if there was any reason he shouldn't let James eat a piece of a strawberry. I said, "I can think of several!")

James started rejecting the breast at the beginning of April (4 months). Right now it's been a month since he nursed for an entire 20 minutes. Several weeks ago I could get him to nurse for up to about 3 minutes if I was lucky. Lately he won't accept it at all and I don't think I'll ever get him to nurse again. I feel like I did my best and that's all I can do. The Newborn Club has been really supportive, and they just say to concentrate on pumping.

The Newborn Club told me many times that I had a good milk supply. To maintain/increase my milk supply I've started "power pumping," where I pump for 10 minutes on, 10 minutes off over the course of an hour. I aim to pump 7 times a day (ideally once every 2 1/2 hours). Each session is 20 minutes long (the power pumping one is 30 minutes) but comes to 30 once bottle washing and bottle making is figured in. That means 220 minutes of my day (nearly 4 hours!) is spent pumping. Plus, during the day that's a significant chunk of time away from the babies, so there's the trade off of making them milk but being with them less. You can see why I might not have been able to get this far without a mom here during the day.

I have sampled my own milk by the way. It wasn't like I took a swig or anything, I just got a couple drops on my hand and took a lick. For the record, it tasted sweeter than cow's milk.


Who hasn't wondered what it tastes like?