Here are a few of our favorite things from the twins’ first month! I had fun creating this little “Monthly Favorites” list in between the girls’ eating/sleeping/playing today! Strangely, I feel very productive! Yay photoshop!
This app was seriously amazing when it came to satisfying my neurotic urge to track everything and look at numbers! It’s great for twins too because you can add more than one baby. I tracked the girls’ every diaper (it even lets you add in whether the diaper was wet/poopy, as well as the consistency and color of the poop)! In the words of my sister, bodily functions have never been so exciting! Using this app, I was also able to track when I breastfed, which baby was on which breast, how much they drank out of a bottle, how much I pumped, and how much the girls were sleeping. It also has a feature where you can add in weight/height from doctor’s appointments, when they got their shots, and different milestones, like rolling over, smiling, etc. I was the app nazi during the twins’ first month of life and made everyone who helped change/feed them report back to me so I could enter it in the app. After four weeks, I was at an appointment going over how many wet/poopy diapers the girls had had in the past 24 hours, how many ounces from the bottle they had taken, etc., and the lactation consultant was like, “You realize you don’t need to track that stuff anymore, right?” My response was that I liked tracking everything! My absolute favorite part is that the app converts information into all sorts of bar graphs, pie charts, and statistics so I can see a visual representation of how much the girls have eaten over time, or grown, for example. Then, it lets you email it or export it to Excel! Yay for Excel and bar graphs! Yes, I am totally OCD and this app fueled my penchant for recording everything! I still use it, but not to record diapers anymore. I mostly use it to record milestones, doctor’s appointments, and notes if anything unusual happened during the day. I love this app so much!
I found two of these off Craig’s List from another twin mom and I’m so glad I bought two! Such a lifesaver when I needed to put the girls down somewhere! At first, we were just using these mostly for naps, but in the first few weeks, the girls had problems spitting up after eating if I put them flat on their back in the bassinet at night, so we eventually started using the rockers at night time as well. The rocker is slightly elevated, so that helped reduce spit-up and discomfort from acid reflux right after eating. They fold up nicely and are very portable, which helped when we brought them from the family room into our bedroom at night. We still use these for naps during the day and the girls love them so much because they feel secure and swaddled. The only downside is that we’ve had to slowly transition them into their crib and they hate all that open space in comparison to the rocker, which they are used to.
3. Aden + Anais Swaddle Blankets
Everyone always told me how amazing these swaddle blankets were, and they really are! The muslin is so light-weight, so the girls don’t get to hot when they are swaddled. Jake is our resident master swaddler and although he has tried to teach me multiple times how to do a good swaddle, mine just don’t compare to his! I bought about five different packs of these because we use them every single day and love them!
4. Earth Mama Natural Nipple Butter
I thought I’d include a picture to demonstrate this one, but then thought better of it haha. I like this stuff a lot better than Lanolin, plus it can be used on the edges of the pump horn thingies so that pumping doesn’t hurt. Good stuff!
5. My Brest Friend Plus Deluxe Twin Nursing Pillow
This really is my best friend since I feel pretty much attached to it 24/7. It’s so big that I’m pretty sure an F-16 could land on it. Both babies can fit on here and it’s great for bottle feeding too. The cover is washable, and it comes with little pouches for cell phones/snacks.
6. Huggies Disposable Changing Pads
Before I discovered these disposable changing pads, I was having to wash the two fabric changing pad covers I have pretty much every day. Then I found these disposable ones. DUH! SO much easier. I put a disposable one over the fabric cover and if the disposable one gets dirty, I just throw it away. These probably contribute to global warming, just like all the diapers I’m going through right now, but oh well. I only have to wash the fabric covers every once in a while now. Hospital chucks also work, but are way thinner and tend to stick to the diapers.
Since these are mostly MY favorites from Month 1, here are some of Samantha and Amelia’s favorites.
Samantha:
LOVED bath time once we figured out that she got cold if we bathed her in the sink or used one of those newborn inserts in the tub. She was a natural in the water and loved to be almost totally submerged, so we took the insert out of her baby bath tub and just held her in the water. Definitely her favorite part of the day!
FOOD! This girl could eat! She was a pound bigger than her sister when she was born and pretty much throughout the entire pregnancy…she totally hogged nutrients from the placenta! After being evicted from the womb, I’m sure it was a shock to not have a continuous supply of food at her disposal, so she ate like it was going out of style. This girl could eat!
Amelia:
HATED bath time, just for the record. LOVED being swaddled. She was my breech baby and during the last month was curled up on my left side all the time. Jake said she looked deformed when the doctors pulled her out because she was curled up like a…well, a fetus, I guess. Amelia loved to curl her legs up and be tightly swaddled by Daddy. She also loved to curl up next to Daddy or sleep on his chest–her favorite place to take a nap!
WALKS! Amelia loved to get out and breathe in the fresh air on our walks. She was always way more alert than Samantha, who usually fell asleep once the stroller got rolling. I think she’s going to turn out to be a little sun baby!
I’m trying to think of anything else I could add, but mostly the girls just slept and ate during the first month. I guess I’ll add sleeping to the list of favorites for both girls!
So fun to look back and see what’s changed from last month!
Lots of love,
