Put your babies down in a safe sleeping position, on their backs with their feet touching the bottom of the cot or Moses basket. Make sure they do not get too hot, particularly if they're sharing a cot. Keep blankets securely tucked in. Have a bedtime routine and stick to it.
You shouldn't share the same bed with your twins because it increases the risk of SIDS. But the AAP does recommend that you room-share — having your twins sleep in your room, each in their own bassinet or crib — ideally for the first six months.
Some twins will start sleeping through the night as early as 8-10 weeks. Typically you can start seeing longer sleep stretches around 12 weeks. Many twins wait until 4-6 months. The bottom line is that every twin is different.
1. At three months: The three-month stage marks the end of the “fourth trimester” and your twins can better adapt to life outside the womb. For one thing, they'll sleep in longer stretches of about three- to four-hour chunks.
Your first year of raising twins will be tough. Expect less sleep, as your world will revolve around feeding your twins, burping them, changing them and putting them to sleep, all while constantly washing two sets of everything from clothes to feeding bottles. Financial costs are also higher with twins.
It is perfectly natural for your twins to cry because that is the only way they have to communicate with you. They cry to express their needs, their wants, and even their dislikes. The most common reasons for crying include hunger, a dirty diaper, sleepiness, boredom, overstimulation, or sleep regression.
Give them Some Space. Once your twins are sleeping in separate cribs and the problem still persists, try moving the cribs as far apart as possible, for example, on opposite walls of the nursery. And again, put white noise machines near each baby's crib.
Unless you have many extra bedrooms in your house with no one using them, it makes more sense to keep twins or multiples in the same room. If you are worried that their noises will wake each other up, keeping them together will help them get used to each other's sounds, rarely disturbing their sleep.
If using sleeping bags make sure babies' heads are far apart to ensure they don't get covered by one another's sleep bag. Both co-bedded and separate sleeping twins should be put down to sleep on their backs, as this reduces the risk of SIDS compared to side or tummy sleeping.
However, for a given pregnancy, only the mother's genetics matter. Fraternal twins happen when two eggs are simultaneously fertilized instead of just one. A father's genes can't make a woman release two eggs. It sounds like fraternal twins do indeed run in your family!
Yes, twin babies should sleep in two separate sleep areas, but that doesn't mean you need 2 bassinets. You can go for a double twin bassinet with a divider in the middle of sleep area to keep babies safe at night (close to each other but separate).
Safe sleep guidelines would suggest that twins be moved into separate beds once they are more mobile; moving into each other's space, causing a risk to one another. The other reason you might consider moving twins into separate beds would be if one consistently wakes the other one up.
Known as twin escalation syndrome (TES), the condition is defined by the tendency of multiples to copy and intensify the behavior of the other, cycling back and forth until the behavior becomes near-unbearable.
If your baby's circadian rhythm puts their natural wake time at 6 a.m., 3 a.m. would be the approximate time that their body stops releasing melatonin and begins to release cortisol. When the release of cortisol corresponds with the end of a sleep cycle, your baby will more than likely wake.
Identical twins, with identical genetic makeup, tended to display similar tendencies toward aggressive or non-aggressive behavior. But fraternal twins, sharing the same environment, often showed different tendencies toward aggression, a way of suggesting genetic influence.
The hardest thing about having twins is...
“Managing the movement of two babies. Carrying them both up and down the stairs, getting them into the car, etc.” —Simeon R. “Often having to make one baby wait!” —Catharine D. “Being outnumbered—the logistics of two on one is definitely the hardest.
You Can Only Control the Things Within Your Control. “Having twins is not twice as hard—it's exponentially more difficult,” says Natalie Diaz, author of What To Do When You're Having Two and CEO of Twiniversity, a global support network for parents of twins.
Multiples are about twice as likely as singleton babies to have birth defects, including neural tube defects (such as spina bifida), cerebral palsy, congenital heart defects and birth defects that affect the digestive system. Growth problems. Multiples are usually smaller than singleton babies.
The longest interval between the birth of twins is 90 days, in the case of Molly and Benjamin West, dizygotic (fraternal) twins born in Baltimore, Maryland, USA to parents Lesa and David West (all USA) on 1 January and 30 March 1996.
Identical twins reported similar levels of happiness, while fraternal twins exhibited greater variation in their reported sense of well-being. These results were found in families of twins raised together and extended with twins reared apart.
Age. People over 30, and particularly those over age 35, are more likely to conceive twins. 4 This is because the level of follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) rises as birthing parents get older. FSH is responsible for the development of eggs in the ovaries before they are released.
"Newborn twins can certainly remain in the same crib initially," Walker says. "If they sleep better when they know the other is close by, crib-sharing can last up until they move into their childhood beds."