Friday, June 8, 2012

A little of this and a little of that...

I've reached a point in this pregnancy that just seems surreal. Like it all happened so quickly, and now we are finally in the home stretch. As things get marked off the list (like making curtains for the nursery and a blanket for each of the the boys!!) it becomes a little more real that these boys are coming... and SOON-ish. At the moment there is a bouncy seat in my living room, a pack'n'play in our bedroom and a fully set up nursery. We have our hospital orientation/tour scheduled in a couple weekends and we are still on the fence about a weekend birthing class at the beginning of July.

This is all becoming very real. Pretty soon, we will have two baby boys, and those boys will completely and totally rely on us... for everything. It is no doubt a daunting task, but it is also a pretty exhilarating feeling. Soon, these babies will be here and we will be parents of babies that reside on the outside of my body! It doesn't help that the two people I've talked to recently that have twins, had them at 33 and 35 weeks. To be clear, that is 4.5-6.5 weeks from now- as in having my babies NEXT month. Holy cow.

I am praying my little heart out that these little boys will stay put until sometime in August, but I'm slowly preparing myself for the idea of them not. I'm anxious to see our new doctor next week and hear his thoughts on the when and how of our boys' birthday. I'm a planner and I love to have an idea of how things might go. I don't need it to be set in stone, but it would help me start preparing a little better, because at the moment it still feels like a very surreal day that will happen waaay in the future.

The list is dwindling and I'm nearly sure it will be complete or almost complete by the I'm 30 weeks... yahoo! This weekend my mom and I are going to cook a few things to put in the freezer, and next week I have a couple of friends coming to spend the day and cook up a couple more freezer items. I am trying to be as prepared as possible for the days and weeks following the birth of our little guys.

On a completely unrelated note... the twin episode of Pregnant in Heels? Holy crap. It was really reassuring when that a mother who admittedly had no idea what she was doing just weeks/days before her babies came said it all came very naturally once they were there- hopefully the same will be true for us! The main thing that was overwhelming to me was the stack of bottles the woman said you would need for ONE DAY! We do plan to breastfeed at least part of the time if not exclusively, but that stack of bottles really stressed me out. We have some bottles, but I'd estimate only about 14 of differing brands and styles. Is this going to be enough to get started? Sure we can always wash bottles... it isn't like it is the end of the world. Those of you who have done this ahead of me, what would you do? Also, was it a good idea to get multiple types of bottles to see what works best for us, or should we just offer one type and then have them get used it it?

Another question for twin mamas... I think the last thing on our 'to-buy' list is a twin nursing pillow. Is this something you used or would have liked to have had? In our multiples class it seemed useful for even bottle feeding two at once, but obviously I don't have any real like experience. Thoughts?

5 comments:

Liz said...

Just joined your site! I'm 19 weeks with a singleton and glad I can learn from you. Congrats on having boys!

Melody said...

About the bottles: I don't have twins but each of my girls used pretty much one bottle during the day and another one at night. I just rinsed it after each use and filled it back up with water. I know sometimes new moms think steralizing after each use is necessary but really??? So, I would suggest letting one boy use only blue bottles ane one use only green that way they will at least be using their own each feeding :)

MaryMargaret said...

Surreal is such a great word to describe this point. I'm with you- please stay put until August babies, but I so want to meet you! Obviously I haven't needed my twin pillow yet, but almost every twin mom who breastfed (even part-time), said it was invaluable. This is getting so exciting! Are you going to post nursery pictures?

L said...

I don't have twins either, but for bottles we didn't need any at first because we were breastfeeding. We use them now for daycare and when I'm not here to feed N. My recommendation is to get a box of two different kinds. You can always buy more types if they don't like what you have, but I think it would be a pain to spend a bunch of money and then have them like the first kind you try.

Stephanie said...

Hey there, so I don't have the twins either but...the bottle thing. We have 12 Gerber Nuk bottles and while we were giving breastmilk and formula I often wished we had more, but I knew we'd get to just using formula and be ok. Since my supply was low, whatever I would pump would get put into a bottle in the fridge and used within a day. Anyway, my two cents, there were days with bottles storing milk in the fridge and him having 7 feedings a day that we'd need bottles so we'd have to wash. Now that we're cutting out the breastmilk and using just formula, he's taking 6 feedings a day so 6 bottles a day. At this point we could wash every other day. I don't boil/microwave sterilize every day, but we do wash his bottles each night in hot water with dish soap and air dry over night.

On the different types, here's my two cents. We were handed down a full set of Playtex Airvent bottles from my nephew. As we started to prep for C and got out the bottles to boil and everything we realized what a pain in the butt they were. Each bottle had like 6-7 pieces that had to be put together to use the bottle properly! We agreed that was too much. My mom found she had a 3 pack of Nuk bottles which only have bottle, nipple, ring (cap and disk to keep liquid from getting in nipple when traveling). And Nuk supposedly helps promote breastfeeding too with the orthodontic nipples so we used those. He does well with them and we like that there aren't a million pieces to wash each night.

I've heard that Babies R Us will take back opened bottles if you're looking to try a few different types. Maybe we got lucky, but Carter took to the Nuk and was fine. We didn't try any others with him. The only issue we had with that was he got used to the Nuk nipple and didn't like his Gumdrop pacifiers anymore so we had to buy a couple Nuk pacis.

Hope somewhere in this you can find some useful info :)

I do like what Melody suggested with each having their own color, but if you're washing each bottle after use it doesn't really matter.

Can't believe they're almost here!! So excited for yall!!!!