Routine for babies/twins?

Do you have a routine? Does it work? Any tips?! 

I am concerned everything I read goes on about the importance of introducing routines at early age.

We are just plodding aloing with the 2 of us but hubby will be back to work soon so I need to try and get my head round looking after the 2 of them on my own through the day

Thanks

Hiya, we didn't have any routine until our DS was three months old, then we started a bed time routine and he's now nearly 7 months and have just got him into a good routine during the day.  I think at your stage it was just a case of trying to get through the day (and the night)

My boys are 7 weeks old now and were also 3 weeks early.

We have always fed them together. When one wakes to feed, the other gets woken and fed at the same time. They are feeding 3 hourly throughout the day and will go up to 5 hours at night.

They are always upstairs in our bedroom by 9.30pm swaddled and have a dummy if they want it for 5 minutes when they are put into their moses basket. This is the only time during the day when they have a dummy. Quite often they refuse the dummy anyway.

This means that after the midnight feed, they will wake up sometime between 2.30 and 4.30am and then the next time they wake up is around 7ish which I think is a reasonable time to get up in the morning.

When I am on my own I have several ways to feed them both together.

1: I put the V shaped pillow over my knees, prop both babies up on it and feed them both.

2: They each sit in a bouncy chair and I sit between it and feed them both.

3: I sit on the floor cradling a twin in the crook of each knee and feed them both.

If I try to feed them seperately it's inevitable that the twin not being fed will become hysterical. Also it throws our routine out and means I will be feeding for a lot longer each day which gives me less time to do other jobs around the house.

I also fit in 3 expressing sessions a day around this schedule so it's rush, rush, rush all day long. I have never known days to pass so quickly!

Hope that helps a bit.

x

Thanks Sharrington! I'm a twin mummy to be and that is great advice that I'll use come September!

KTD - Your girls look utterly gorgeous  I'm having ID girls too and your photo makesme so excited about the arrival of mine.

We didn't have a routine until the twins fell into one at about 4 months I guess (we did do a bedtime routine at the same time every night). They BF on demand and I didn't feed them both together. With my ample bosom I found feeding 2 at the same time impossible,

Thanks

Today I am going to be more strict about feeding 3 hourly and will wake them if they are sleeping.  Hopefully they will sleep longer thro the night.

I have had to introduce a dummy occasionally as the screaming breaks my heart (even tho I know they are just hungry!) 

KTD ours were in a bit of a routine as we spent 3 weeks in scbu and tried to stick to feeding 4 hourly as much as poss when we got home.

We always fed them at the same time and woke them if necessary, I personally think this is more important when you have twins rather than just one. When hubby went back to work I fed them one after the other and mostly kept them feeding in that order and also as the girls get older you'll get to know which one is better at waiting at which time of the day.

I also had this book and found it quite useful when trying to introduce more of a routine including naps etc around 4 months. Some of it is quite strict I found the bit about when you should have your breakfast a laugh but it did give me some good guidelines to go on and the bits written by Alice Beer herself a twin mum very good.

HTH, gotta dash for now

S x