Archive for the 'Feeding' Category

Book review: Twin Sense

Published
by
twinutero
on January 14, 2009
in Books, Feeding, Getting around, Getting help, Pregnancy and Sleep
. 0 Comments

twinsenseTwin Sense: A Sanity-Saving Guide to Raising Twins from Pregnancy Through the First Year. By Dagmara Scalise. 2009. Amacom. New York.

I highly recommend this book for expectant or new parents of twins. Twin Sense is 200 pages of thoughtful advice from a mother of twins and an older sibling. I can relate.

The book is divided into 4 sections.

1. Preparing for Twins. Includes financial considerations, buying what you really need, answering probing/insulting questions from strangers, and preparing siblings and fathers.

2. Managing the Basics. Feeding, bathing, diapering, sleeping.

3. Leaving the House. Yes! One quarter of the book dedicated to getting out of the house! Flying included.

4. Life After Babyhood. A bit about discipline, child-proofing and a summary of “best tips” for life with twins.

This book is straight-to-the-point. There are lots of  amusing anecdotes, but don’t expect a scintillating read or cute full-color photos of twins. And what frazzled parent of two or more infants wants that? The sections are short, easy to find, indexed and summarized so you can scan for the information you need in just a few seconds.

I also appreciate that the author is specific. She recommends brands that parents of twins have tried and liked - but I didn’t feel the book was trying to sell me anything. As with Twin Set, Twin Sense is US focused and quite mainstream (no discussion of cloth diapers, for instance).

Still, I would have learned a lot from Twin Sense had I read it 3 years ago. In fact, I learned a lot reading now. Who would have thought of bathing twinfants in a laundry basket?

Thanks to Nettie Hartsock and Amacom for the review copy.

Out with the old….

Published
by
twinutero
on December 29, 2008
in Coping and Feeding
. 2 Comments

sootherThree days ago (has it been only three days?) we packed up the soothers and sent them the way of all outgrown soothers - to some undisclosed but very needy babies.

Just like last April when we dispatched their bottles, the time had come.

Alex and Jon turned 3 this month yet showed no sign of voluntarily giving up their soothers. In fact, they had become even more dependent on them. When at home (we’ve rarely taken soothers outside the house) they would ask for them, and their respective blankets and bedtime toys, every few hours and drag the whole lot around the house. They seemed always on the verge of going to sleep.

They would have animated conversations through their soothers only to be interrupted by: ” I can’t understand you with that thing in your mouth.” And they”d take it out, hold it in their hand like a pipe, finish the sentence and pop it back in.

We’d spend large chunks of time looking for lost soothers and - the breaking point for us - the twins would wake up several times a night because their soothers had disappeared somewhere in or underneath their beds.

We tried phasing them out, allowing soothers only at nap and bedtime but that only led to endless bargaining and unhappiness. So, after a particularly bad night, we took them away.

And how did it go? The first day, a general period of denial by all, went pretty well. They napped with minimal fuss, stating that they were now big boys. Even the first night was better than expected: no calling for soothers in the middle of the night and only a little complaining at bedtime.

It went downhill from there,  for Alex at least. They didn’t nap at all the next day despite 90 minutes of trying. That night, Alex moaned for several hours about his lack of soother. Jon decided this was hilarious and taunted Alex relentlessly, which had the effect of enraging Alex and allowing Jon to forget about his soother completely.

Last night, however, Alex slept all the way through, after only an hour of protest. And just now, they are settled down for naps.

We’ll see. Jon and Alex didn’t react the same way to soother deprivation. I would have thought Jon to be more upset since he’s had one since infancy. Alex has had one only since losing his bottle. But like everything with twins - or children in general - it’s hard to predict and impossible to generalize.

Book review: Twin Set

Published
by
twinutero
on July 31, 2008
in Books, Feeding, Getting around, Getting help, Sleep and Writing
. 4 Comments

I read this book with a twinge of nostalgia – and nausea.

My twins have now outgrown all-night breast-bottle feedings, infant bouts of inexplicable crying and multiple poops a day. The toddler years are not exactly peaceful, but that sickening sleep deprivation and round-the-clock care of the first year is over. Reading Twin Set brought back both the difficulties of those first few months as well as the sheer amazement of giving birth to, and caring for two tiny twins.

Twin Set is a practical guide to pregnancy, birth and the first years of parenting twins. The book doesn’t aim to be a comprehensive guide to parenting in general. If you want details on prenatal care, breastfeeding or toilet training, you’ll have to supplement with other books. But Twin Set does a good job of highlighting differences between parenting twins and parenting singletons. And as mothers of twins know, almost everything is different: pregnancy, birth, post-natal care (both for you and the babies), feeding, bathing, getting out of the house, discipline, starting school – and everything in between.

The best part of this book is that the advice is not simply the authors’ opinion but was gathered through a survey. According to the introduction, the authors surveyed 300 mothers of twins “from around the country” (presumably the US). The scientist in me wanted to know much more about this survey: how it was conducted; what questions were asked; how the mothers were chosen etc. Still, there is wisdom among 300 mothers, and that shows in the book.

Twin Set would be most useful for parents about to give birth to twins. No one is reading just after the birth, and within a year or so you will have figured it all out anyway. But for the parents-to-be there are many useful insights: just how difficult bathing two slippery, crying infants can be; the importance of recording all feeding and pooping in the first few months because you’ll forget who did what and when; that grocery shopping will never be as quick and easy, partly because most shopping carts have only one kid’s seat.

I do have a couple of gripes with the book.

The information is very (although implicitly) US-centered. Some things, like a “Snap ‘N Go” or leaving your kids in the car while you run back to the house, may not make sense outside America.

I also got tired of the book’s cutesy language and general dumbing-down. Consultant pediatricians, for instance, are called “Mommy Doc” and “Daddy Doc”. Really, we can handle a real name and title! And I’ve yet to meet a mother who would spend precious alone-time getting a manicure or doing word-puzzles.

My biggest gripe was with the book’s slant on the environment. Buying bottled water by the case-load (or at all) is simply irresponsible. Trying filtering. And, sorry, teaching your kids to play with empty toilet rolls does not negate thousands of disposable diapers in the land fill. Yes, there is debate on cloth versus disposable diapers (see The Great Disposable Diaper Debate) but telling parents to just “stop worrying” rather than make a conscious and informed decision seems, again, irresponsible (as is failing to disclose Twin Sets partnership with Pampers!).

Gripes aside, this is a useful and realistic book for parents embarking on the head-spinning adventure of raising multiples.

(Thanks to Random House for the review copy.)

Update on bisphenol A

Published
by
twinutero
on April 16, 2008
in Feeding and Health and environment
. 0 Comments

Our children may be among the last to consume bisphenol A (BPA) with their milk and formula. Or so we hope.

Since I wrote on using Medela baby bottles, public pressure to ban BPA has heightened and the availability of BPA-free baby products has soared.

And then… one of the biggest producers of polycarbonate bottles and the strongest defender of BPA safety, Nalgene, launched a line of BPA-free drinking bottles. Read more commentary on Z Recommends.

And now… Health Canada has announced that it is “taking action” on BPA. The department has completed its risk assessment, which focused on infants and newborns, and is proposing a ban on polycarbonate baby bottles.

Here is the story according to the Globe and Mail.

Here is Health Canada’s offical news release of April 18. Make of it what you will.

Also see information on BPA from the Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment.

The day we gave the bottles away

Published
by
twinutero
on April 6, 2008
in Feeding, Guilt, Health and environment and Sleep
. 0 Comments

It was overdue, long overdue.

Last weekend we finally rid the house of all baby bottles. Alex and Jon are over two, after all, and Thomas is three and a half. It was embarrassing to have them ask for a bottle in public or have visitors pass a load of empty bottles in the kitchen sink.

Mostly, we were tired of the dependency. Whenever the kids were sleepy, or upset or awake in the night, they would ask for a bottle of milk. They didn’t always get one, but they were rewarded often enough to keep asking.

Why did we wait so long? Because there never seemed a good time to take away something so obviously comforting. Had Thomas been an only child, or more than fifteen months older than his brothers, we would have weaned him long ago. But I don’t think he sees himself as older at all (well, except when it’s convenient) so it was hard to say yes to the twins and no to Thomas. We decided to wait until they were all ready to leave the bottles behind.

That, of course, could have been long ago. All three kids started drinking from sippy cups before they were one and from real cups before they were two. They didn’t need a bottle to have a drink. They sometimes needed a bottle to settle down, however. It was a habit, and with all the changes of the past six months (i.e., moving to a different hemisphere) we were reluctant to break the habit and further rock their world.

Last weekend, however, after a string of wakeful nights, we said enough. In the morning, we told the kids that today was a special day. We were going to pack up all the bottles and give them to some babies who need them more than we do. Everyone helped, Jon most enthusiastically. The bottles went into a bag; the bag went to “the babies”. In fact, the bottles went to the basement until we were sure we could handle life without the bottle crutch. Yesterday, they did go to less-fortunate children in a nearby township.

The transition was surprisingly easy. We always have an answer to “I want a bottle.” Jon usually pipes up with, “Some babies.” They have seen the bottles go into the bag and they know that babies, not boys, have milk in a bottle.

We’ve replaced nightly bottles with Klean Kanteen sippy cups. Klean Kanteen products are stainless steel, free of bisphenol-A, odorless and dripless. We bought them in Ottawa before we left (at Arbour). They are pricey however and the kids objected to the chill of holding a steel cup. So we found bottle insulators and now have the most expensive sippy cups on the planet.

But… we have no bottles.