Toddler Thursday: Biting

September 4, 2014September 4, 2014lunchldyd
Ask the Readers, Behavior, Development, Different Gender, Discipline, Fraternal, Multiple Types, Parenting, Safety, Toddler Thursday, Toddlers2 Comments

When the twins were about 15 or 16 months old, I started noticing what looked like bite marks on Baby Boy’s hands. It was an anomaly, as no one had observed him biting himself or being bitten. For a bit I actually thought they were self-inflicted in a temper tantrum, or maybe it was an experiment to leave marks on himself. It wasn’t until I saw a mark at the wrong angle to be self-inflicted that I began to suspect Baby Girl of biting her brother.

Strangely, it wasn’t for another while before we actually caught them in the act. And then Baby Girl began to get these markings too. They were really good about doing it quickly when no one was watching though.

But by now, 5 or 6 months later, we’ve had the chance to see them at it many times. They’re still pretty stealthy about it, but we now know what to watch for: a certain prolonged guttural screech, usually coming from both parties in a fight over something, and then a quick lean-over by one, a pause of silence while the pain registers, and finally the extended agonizing cry of the other.

The problem is when they play in close proximity. And of course that’s how they almost always play. If they are confined in the same room for a while, that’s when the conflicts arise. They get cranky and will start fighting over toys and space. Big Sis actually got caught up in it for the first time this past weekend. We can’t really be sure what happened, but according to her she was trying to play with her brother when sister came and bit her, hard enough to leave a bruise. We think Baby Girl was trying to play with brother. There wasn’t much warning, and they did all this while both myself and their dad were in the same room!

Now I really don’t think my kids are malicious. I’ve watched them bite and get bitten and then go back to playing alongside each other like nothing happened. In fact, after Baby Girl noticed her sister crying after being bitten, she went to comfort her by rubbing her arm and giving her a hug and kiss. (Big Sis was just as loving, forgiving immediately and defending her little sister from our scoldings.) They just get caught in the moment and that is their only form of communication when screaming doesn’t work.

However, the bites are getting more vicious, and they’re no longer on the hands but on the upper arms. And now they’ve bitten someone other than themselves.

Should I be concerned? Is this something that they will grow out of? Is this a twin thing? I certainly wouldn’t want them to be that kid in preschool, the one who bites. We’re at a loss as to what to do, but they seem to be getting over the bites very easily. It doesn’t even faze them that their arms are all bruised up for days, but we are really just baffled at and bothered by this behavior.

Any MoM’s out there who can help us out?

lunchldyd is mom to 21mo biting b/g twins, and their 4yo sister who never bit.

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Two Naps to One

June 11, 2014June 10, 2014lunchldyd
Behavior, Different Gender, Fraternal, Frustration, Multiple Types, Napping, Overnight, Parenting, Perspective, Sleep, Toddlers4 Comments

A week and a half of summer break under my belt, and I’m ready for a vacation from my vacation.

I’ve known for a while that the twins’ naps weren’t working, but I hoped that I had more time to enjoy the status quo before upending it all for the dreaded transition. However, it became glaringly obvious that they were NOT going to take their 9am naps anymore, no matter how hard I tried to tire them out. Thing is, I’ve been looking forward to taking them to the Mommy-n-Me class that Big Sis and I attended almost two years ago, which is at 11am. But with my teaching schedule getting out the door by 6:45am, all the kids are used to waking up super early. That means, if they take no morning nap, they will almost definitely be sleeping through that class.

I can’t remember when Big Sis transitioned to one nap, but I am the one who did it, because my mom tells me that after some sort of break from school (winter/spring/summer), I brought her back already switched over to her new nap schedule. I do not remember it because it must have been a pretty natural and easy process. We settled on 11am-1pm for over a year. It wasn’t until her siblings landed on a 12:30-2:30 afternoon nap that I changed her nap to synchronize with theirs. But that wasn’t traumatic either, because she was ready to be awake longer in the mornings and have a later bedtime. There were a couple days of brief crankiness around her prior naptime, but I distracted her with something and she transitioned just fine.

No such luck with these two. There’s been lots of whining and general crankiness, even some food throwing and all-out meltdowns. Part of the difficulty has to result from the fact that there are two of them whose sleep/wake times need to be synchronized, but I think it’s mostly because they’re just not as agreeable as their sister. They’re much more active, and will fight to stay awake. Plus, as they share a bedroom and have their cribs next to each other, they will sometimes keep each other awake or wake each other up.

I’ve been writing down their naptimes for this last 1.5 weeks, and it looks like we’re starting to stabilize. And I’ve kept them more or less on the same schedule:

M 12:30-2 (garbage truck woke them)

Tu 12:45-2:45 (woke naturally)

W 11:30-1 (Big Sis woke them)

Th 9:30-9:45 (in car); 1-3:30 (woke naturally)

F 9:45-10:05 (in car); 1:30-4 (I woke them)

What I’ve learned this past week is that they haven’t been getting enough sleep. They’ve been fussy and unhappy, particularly in the late mornings. Their nighttime sleep hasn’t been impacted too much by all of this (thank goodness!), other than falling asleep slightly earlier on the one-nap days. On Friday it felt like they were trying to catch up on sleep after being deprived for almost a week. Also the little catnaps in the car indicate they are indeed really tired.

I’ve been trying to force them to nap after lunch (more convenient time for me), but 6am to noon is proving to be too long a span for wakefulness, and too abrupt a change to make. They still need about 2-3 hours of naps during the day, but spaced right in between when they wake and their bedtime, so probably 10:30-1:30, keeping a wake time of 6am and bedtime of 6pm, which is what I hoped for on Saturday. Their actual naptime turned out to be 10:30-12:45. Close enough.

They woke up earlier the last couple of days though. We’re not even getting a full two hours in that nap anymore. And bedtime crept up to 6ish. Not the ideal I had in mind, but there’s also been less crying and screaming, so I guess we are making progress?

Sadly, I had to sacrifice Big Sis’s nap in this transition too. She was sleeping 1-2:30, but with her siblings unable to make it to nap at that time with her, I decided it was time for her to drop her nap entirely and move back her bedtime by 1.5 hrs. Other than her taking little catnaps in the car if I happen to drive over 15 mins in the afternoons, she’s taken to this just fine. And it’s kind of nice they’re all going down earlier for the night.

lunchldyd‘s b/g twins are 18mo, and their big sis just turned 4yo. She is welcoming any good suggestions for making this transition easier.

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Identical Vs Fraternal: What Your Doctor Didn’t Explain About Your Twin Ultrasound

March 12, 2014June 24, 2016Sadia
Developmental Geekery, Fraternal, Identical, Multiple Types, Science of Multiplesconception, identical and fraternal, multiple pregnancy, questions people ask83 Comments

My Story

(or skip to the basics or the science)

I was 7 weeks pregnant when I had my first ultrasound. The doctor pointed out the shared outer sac (chorion) and the two distinct inner sacs (amnions). I didn’t need her to finish. Thanks to Advanced Placement Bio class in high school (embryonic development) I knew I had a miracle in my womb: identical twins. Once we’d called everyone we needed to share the good news with, I hit Google, and quickly concluded from their monochorionic/diamniotic (mono/di) state that my little ones had split from a single cluster of identical cells somewhere between 3 and 9 days after conception. I’ll tell you how I made the calculation in a little bit.

The Basics

Most people don’t know a whole lot about twins or higher order multiples, and are intrigued by them. Folks I run into are usually aware that there are two basic types, identical and fraternal, but often don’t know precisely what the difference is. Part of this comes from the term “identical.” In casual English, “identical” means “exactly the same,” and so people often assume that identical twins should look alike, act alike, and think alike. This assumption often gets extended to fraternal twins, in that they should look different, act differently, and think differently.

I don’t argue with people about whether my children look enough alike to be “really” identical, and instead give them a quick science lesson. You’d be surprised how many medical professionals, even obstetricians, don’t remember the science of twinning they covered in the depths of college or medical school, and therefore jump to possibly incorrect conclusions about whether a set of twins is identical or fraternal. Next time you need to explain the distinction to someone, feel free to use the visual aids below.

TWINS! Understand the basics with this clear primer. Click To Tweet

The Science

Identical multiples grow from the same fertilized egg and therefore have basically the same DNA. Fraternal multiples come from different fertilized eggs, and therefore basically share 50% of the same DNA, as do siblings conceived by the same parents at different times. Sharing a DNA template makes it likely that identical siblings will look very much alike, but DNA doesn’t predict everything.

My daughters, for instance, share their DNA, but have noses of different shapes and different hairlines, due to developmental differences that don’t appear to have a genetic basis. They’re also different heights, likely because one is a pickier eater than the other and because dysphagia related to macroglossia (trouble swallowing because her tongue was too big for her mouth) meant that she ate less than Sissy after she weaned.

Vocabulary

Before I go much further into the science, let’s talk about the terminology we’ve been using.

So, the embryo is inside the amnion, which is in turn inside the chorion. The umbilical cord traverses the two membranes to connect the embryo to the placenta, which collects nutrition from mommy for baby.

Twins in the Womb

Now let’s talk twins.

Monozygotic twins are identical ones. They started from a single zygote. (Mono means one.) Dizygotic twins are fraternal ones. They started from two zygotes. (Di means two.)

Monochorionic/monoamniotic (mono/mono) twins are monozygotic twins who share a single amnion and a single chorion.

Monochorionic/diamniotic (mono/di) twins, like my daughters, are monozygotic twins who have separate amnions and share a single chorion.

Dichorionic/diamniotic (di/di) twins are monozygotic or dizygotic twins who have separate amnions and separate chorions.

I try to make this clearer in the image below. With one egg and sperm, you can get one baby… or two babies who are mono/mono, mono/di or di/di. With two eggs and two sperm, you’ll always get di/di twins.

So here’s the trick. In the image above, you can’t tell the difference between the identical di/di twins and the fraternal di/di twins. And neither can the ultrasound tech. So, if you have di/di twins, chances are good that they’re fraternal, but you just don’t know for sure.

If you have di/di #twins, chances are good that they're fraternal, but you just don't know for sure. Click To Tweet

Reader Noura I was kind enough to share ultrasound images of her di/di identical twins, whose ultrasounds look just like those of fraternal twins. Remember, the mono-di stuff refers to the membranes around the babies, and not the numbers of eggs and sperm.

Reading the Ultrasound

So, in my little chart above, I had to note that there are extraordinarily rare cases of boy/girl identical twins, but this is a teeny tiny proportion of the population. If you ran across such a pair, you’d recognize them from the news. So, please, just assume that boy/girl twins are fraternal (dizygotic) or that one had a sex change. Either way, it’s not polite to ask. Girl/girl twins and boy/boy twins can be fraternal or identical.

Timing of Monozygotic Twin Split

Here’s a fun fact. The arrangement of amnion and chorion can tell those of us with identical twins when they split apart!

TTTS can be very serious and put both your babies at risk. The placental blood supply is shared unevenly, meaning that one has more than his or her share of nutrition and oxygen, the other less than his or hers. Many obstetricians will closely monitor mothers expecting twins to watch for TTTS. While it’s almost unheard of with fraternal twins, reader Halie H. wrote to us to say, “My di/di fraternal (boy/girl) twins’ placentas fused. They were born with one failed and one really really red placenta; they were sent off to be studied as an example of TTTS in fraternals.”

In #TTTS, the placental blood supply is shared unevenly between twins, putting both babies at risk. Click To Tweet

I’m not an expert on this stuff, but I do love genetics and studied it in college (although I ended up switching away from a biology major junior year). If you have additional questions, I’ll do my best to answer them.

Before I sign off, I need to give a big old shout out to Canva.com. I have been planning to write this post for years, but not having an artistic bone in my body, knew that I couldn’t do it justice without an illustrator. Thanks to the free online graphic design tool, Canva, I was able to create the graphics I’ve included in this post.

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Twinfant Tuesday: The Secret to Synchronizing Twin Naps – Wake Em Up!

December 10, 2013December 9, 2013RebeccaD
Fraternal, Napping, Overnight, Parenting, SAHM, Sleep, Twinfant Tuesday9 Comments

Synchronized sleep: the holy grail of twin parenting. Veteran parents, experts, and other advice-givers agree that the key to synchronizing twin naps is to put them down to sleep at the same time.

It makes sense. Logic would dictate that if you start nap at the same time, the babies will eventually get on the same rhythm.

However, we all know twinfants are the ultimate defy-ers of logic, and sleep-deprived parents are hard pressed to puzzle out why their carefully laid plans are not working. Our fraternal twin boys were determined to sleep in shifts. They just had different internal clocks and different ways of being soothed to sleep. If I put them down for nap at the same time, one would sleep and one would cry, babble, roll around, or poop – anything but fall asleep. I had one early riser and one night owl. For 6 months, I basically did nothing but put babies to sleep, yet I almost always had a baby awake. A special kind of torture for the exhausted mama!

Here’s what we finally figured out: you can’t make them fall asleep. But you can wake them up.

I know, I know – it goes against every instinct. But once we established firm wake-up times, our boys were finally able to synchronize our twins’ naps and nighttime sleep, which made EVERYTHING in our lives better. The parents got much-needed breaks throughout the day, the babies gained better quality time when awake, and the entire family got the predictability of a good routine.

At 6 months, our twins’ bedtime was the most consistent part of the day. So we determined firm wake-up times that would ensure a 7pm bedtime: 7am, 11am, and 4pm.

Yes, we sometimes have to wake them up at 7am. This is the hardest part. My babies could sleep til 8am some mornings. But it would throw the whole day off, which would throw the whole night off, which usually resulted in a 5am wake up the next day. Not worth it!

I put them down for nap at roughly the same times, but it is flexible within a half hour, based on their sleepy cues (9am and 2pm). This gives them about 4 hours of possible nap time in the day. R takes a good half hour or more to settle down, and M needs more sleep than R. They usually get 2.5-3.5 hours of sleep per day. As they more toward only one nap, this is changing, but our schedule is not. Sometimes R hangs out for an hour in his crib without falling asleep, just talking and playing. If he cries, I go get him and enjoy some one-on-one time. Then he has to wait for the next scheduled nap time (unless it’s Meltdown City, in which case he goes down earlier, but the wake-up time is still strictly observed). M is nowhere near ready for one nap. Once they are BOTH skipping a nap everyday for 1-2 weeks, we will make a schedule change.

They both quickly adjusted to the wake-up times, and usually wake on their own. But we still don’t let them sleep past our set times, no matter what: even if they just fell asleep, even if they had a shorter nap earlier in the day, etc. For illness, we just put the sick baby down earlier.

Here is the crazy part: not only did set wake-ups sync up our polar-opposite sleepers, the kids love it! Very rarely do they wake up grumpy. They are happy, refreshed, and ready for action (basically the opposite of when they wake ME up :o).

Do you have any tips for synchronizing twin naps – especially if you have very different sleepers?

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The Search for a New Pediatrician

December 4, 2013December 4, 2013lunchldyd
Anger, Different Gender, Fraternal, Frustration, Guilt, Medical, Mommy Issues, Parenting, Parenting Twins5 Comments

A few weeks ago, I went through a semi-traumatic experience at my pediatrician’s office, one that prompted me to start searching for a new pediatrician. (Please read this letter first to get the full back story.)

I was actually very torn whether to even bring it up with the doctor, much less take the drastic step of actually switching to a different one. I don’t know why exactly, because I’m usually a very proactive and assertive person, especially when it comes to anything dealing with my kids.

I may have felt some guilt for having put my daughter in that situation in the first place. What if I had stayed with her the entire time instead of going back out to the lobby to check on my son? What if I had my husband meet me at the doctor’s earlier so he was there for the temp/weight checks? These thoughts went back and forth in my head, resulting in me sort of blaming myself for letting it happen. Yet, I couldn’t shake the upset feeling, and therefore I wrote the letter.

It was a source of anxiety for many weeks. Some fear of confrontation perhaps, or maybe just a fear of the unknown. What if I did switch doctors and it wasn’t any better at the new place, or even, it was worse?!? This is where HYDYI helped me. From the comments I got on my post, I garnered enough moral support to feel justified in what I was thinking. (Thank you!)

I rewrote the end of the letter, to strongly emphasize that I feel the conduct of his staff has become unacceptable. I demanded that I would be willing to work only with the single competent nurse/medical assistant on future visits. Then I mailed it and waited in anticipation of what would happen next.

Well, a few days later my doctor called and left me a voicemail. In it he thanked me for writing the letter and bringing the issues to his attention. He wanted to call and speak with me the next day. I was trepidatious because though the reply was prompt and the message was polite and sincere, there was no apology in his voicemail. I just had a bad feeling that a conversation with him would not turn out well.

It did not turn out well, indeed. He called at lunchtime the next day, and the conversation began nicely… but I was getting the vibe that he didn’t even have a clue who I was until almost the end of the conversation when he remembered that I was the parent with the side by side double stroller that didn’t fit in his exam room doors. He explained that his twin patients usually ride in tandem strollers, and they’re accompanied by many relatives, which I felt was his way of faulting me for the horrible visit that I had. I was getting more and more upset as the conversation continued, and he was having some trouble keeping his cool as well it seemed.

But the last straw was when he absolutely refused to ever see my twins in a joint appointment. For the first time I’ve ever heard this in the almost-year of my twins’ lives, he explained that his policy is that separate patients have separate appointments. He will not see them back to back, nor can shots be given to one after the other. Appointments are made together, but in actuality, they’re not at the same time. His rationale is that he never wants to make a mistake with a twin and give the wrong vaccinations, so wants to take his time as well as give his staff time to make sure no mistakes take place.

I could kind of understand if the patients were identical and very difficult to tell apart, but my twins are not, and his policy really applies to all sibling appointments, which makes absolutely no sense to me. Plus, really, what parent would let one child get a double dose of vaccines while the other got none? And couldn’t you easily tell which baby got shots by which one is crying hysterically and has little band-aids on the legs already anyway?

So that was it. His insinuation that I should bring a cadre of people to my kids’ appointments to help out, and that I need to buy a new stroller to accommodate his facilities, brought me to the conclusion that I never want to see him or his staff again.

On Veterans’ Day when my preschooler and I had the day off, I made an appointment with a new pediatricians’ office to meet their patient liaison. I knew the second I walked into the office that the vibe was different there. We liked it so much that I changed them to my provider that very same day. Fingers crossed that our first actual doctor’s visit will be everything I’m expecting it to be.

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Are Your Boy/Girl Twins Identical?

ImageOctober 25, 2013October 25, 2013Sadia
Different Gender, Fraternal, Mommy Issues1 Comment

I may be having just a little too much fun with the awesome power of Some Ecards.

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Information About Twins

October 10, 2013October 19, 2013dorydoyle
Different Gender, Fraternal, Identical, Multiple Types, Pregnancy, Same Genderfraternal, identical, types of twins9 Comments

*Note: There will be some tasteful “Birds and the Bees” talk on this blog post. If you are not comfortable with this, please do not read further.*

When someone finds out I am pregnant, there are usually lots of congratulations: “Oh, that is wonderful! You are going to love it! You will be such great parents!”

Then they find out that we are going to have twins, and the mood tends to change: “Oh. Get ready to have your hands full!” or “I have a cousin who had twins,” or “Get your rest now,” or “Double trouble.”

When we first found out it was twins, my reaction was very much like those that we face every day. I was terrified. My perfect image of being a mom of my son or daughter and then having another little one a few years down the line… well that was gone. Could I go to the grocery store ever again? Would I need a bigger car? What happens when both of them cry at once? How can I do this?

Then, something happened, and I realized how unbelievably blessed we are to have not just one baby, but two. There is a reason why we were given this gift at this point in our lives, whether we thought we were ready for it or not. So now, my reply to those Debbie Downers is “We are so excited to have twins! We are ready for this adventure.” Once I passively confront the negativity, it helps them change their mood too… usually.

Then the typical 2nd question comes: “Do twins run in your family?”

As I have answered this question about 100 times (and remember, I am 30 weeks pregnant at this point), I realize that so many people do not understand how twins “happen,” the differences between the different kinds of twins, and how it runs in families. I thought I might take this post to answer some of these questions.

What is an identical twin?

An identical twin is when one egg is released and is fertilized by one sperm. It separates into two different embryos, but they have originally come from the same egg and sperm. That means that they will have the exact same DNA. That also means that they will be boy/boy or girl/girl twins. There cannot be identical boy/girl twins, except in very rare cases of shared chromosomal abnormalities. They will look exactly the same (with minor differences due to “nurture” or development, but the “nature” is identical).

What is a fraternal twin?

A fraternal twin is when there are two eggs that are released during ovulation. They are both fertilized with two separate sperm. Genetically, these twins are no more similar than non-twin siblings. The only thing more than siblings that fraternal twins share are a birthday and a womb at the same time. Fraternal twins can be a boy/boy, girl/girl, or a boy/girl.

Due to the prevalence of fertility drugs and treatments that stimulate the release of eggs, the number of cases of fraternal twins is on the rise. Naturally, usually only one mature egg is released at ovulation. However, with fertility medicine, it causes more than one egg to be released at ovulation. With IVF (in vitro fertilization), more than one fertilized embryo can be transferred into the woman’s uterus. Although the release of multiple eggs can and does happen naturally, and identical twinning can occur with fertility treatments just as in spontaneous conception, twins from fertility treatments are usually fraternal.

Do twins run in your family?

Ah, the question that I know is coming upon the mention of twins. The answer that we give to these people is, “Yes. They run on both sides. We always joked about having twins, but we never thought that it would actually happen.”

But here is the real answer. Yes, they are FOUND in our family. My maternal grandfather was a twin (no surprise to any Doyle Dispatch blog readers as I talk about Papa Alan all the time). They are also found on Tim’s maternal side. However, here’s the thing: both of these cases are identical twins. Are you ready for this bombshell? Identical twins don’t “run in the family.” If you think about how identical twins form, it is the separation of an embryo. It is, in essence, a freak of nature. A really scientifically cool freak of nature, but a freak of nature, nonetheless.

Fraternal twins are actually the ones that can “run in the family,” and only on the mother’s side. For fraternal twins to be formed spontaneously, mom has to simultaneously release two eggs. However, we don’t have any fraternal twins in our recent family history. For us, it was just a fluke. But it was one that we are so excited to have!

What about the other kinds of twins I hear about?

In the twin world, it actually does get a bit more complex. There are different kinds of identical and fraternal twins, and their health and development in utero is tied to these differences. I will do my best to explain the differences here. If you are satisfied with the answers I gave above, please feel free to stop reading this section now.

Monozygotic Twins (MZ)

Also called identical twins. “Mono” = one. “Zygote” = egg. This is the “header” word for many of the following terms.

Monochorionic-Monoamniotic (Mo/Mo)

Identical twins that develop in the same inner and outer sacs.

Monochorionic-Diamniotic (Mo/Di)

Identical twins with one outer sac (chorionic) and two inner sacs (each embryo has its own amniotic fluid and sac). Both mm/mo and mo/di twins frequently share a single placenta. There are rare cases where fraternal twins have a fused placenta, but that is very unusual.

Dichorionic-Diamniotic Twins (Di/Di)

Two external sacs (chorions) and two internal sacs (amnions) to house the amniotic fluid. The Doyle Twins are Di/Di twins.

Conjoined Twins

These are identical twins where the division of the embryo starts, but it doesn’t finish. Often, conjoined twins will share organs.

Chimeras

It is possible, but enormously rare, for fraternal twin embryos to fuse early in development, resulting in a single person who has two people’s DNA. Chimeras usually go through life without ever knowing that theirs could have been a twin birth or that they have two sets of cells with different DNA.

So, that is “Twins in a Nutshell.” I hope that it has answered some questions for you. Leave a comment if you have questions or clarifications for me!

*This post originally appeared on Dory’s blog “Doyle Dispatch.” To read more posts about Dory’s pregnancy and nursery decorating on her blog, you can see the list here.*

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Dear Pediatrician

October 3, 2013October 4, 2013lunchldyd
Anger, Ask the Readers, Attitude, Different Gender, Fraternal, Frustration, Infants, Medical, Mommy Issues, Parenting7 Comments

I wanted to let you know that I was very dissatisfied, and actually quite upset at one point during my recent visit to your office.

I’ve always appreciated your straight-forward no-nonsense style, but since our twins have been born, the quality of your staff is becoming unacceptable. They have been inexperienced, disorganized, and in my opinion, unqualified to work with young children.

At one of our babies’ first appointments in your office, a nurse wrote the wrong name on one of my twins’ vaccination cards and decided to shred it without my permission. I was close to tears when I found this out. It takes just a little more attention to differentiate my babies. They’re not even identical, in fact of opposite genders, but I get asked every single time which baby is which, often incorrectly.

Every visit takes longer than it should. I don’t expect having two babies’ visit to be the same duration as one child, but it should take less time than two separate appointments. Their measurements, exams, and vaccinations can all be given back-to-back. Some acknowledgement and understanding could be made by your staff for double cranky babies who are waiting up to 15 minutes between each of these steps.

During this most recent visit, your staff was unable to tell me what to do with my twins or my stroller. We were in the hallway, obstructing traffic, until I decided to take the stroller back out to the waiting room. No one offered to help with the babies, so I was taking one after the other into the exam room by myself, first for temp/weight checks, then for your physical exam. This is obviously the most inefficient way to set up a twin appointment. There was a point when I was caring for my son in the hallway that the nurse left my daughter on the scale, at counter height, alone. I wasn’t alerted of this until she cried. She could easily have fallen.

Though I like you as our doctor, I believe the lack of competent trained staff is hurting your practice. If conditions aren’t different at our next visit, I may have no choice but to consider looking for a new pediatrician.

—————————

I haven’t sent this letter yet, though I’m obviously irate, because I haven’t decided whether I should. I’m afraid conditions are the same at every pediatricians’ office, and what I know is better than what I don’t, I suppose. I’m also afraid of some sort of retribution. What do you all think? Is this experience common? Is it a twin thing?

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If You Can’t Say Something Nice About Both of Them…

August 17, 2013MandyE
Fraternal, Other people, ParentingIndividuality, psychology, things people say3 Comments

As a parent of multiples, most of us eventually grow accustomed to the “You’ve got your hands full!”-type comments. I have my stock answers to those, most of which [I hope] are pretty gracious, recognizing that folks don’t generally mean to be as annoying as they sometimes are.

What really bugs me, though, are comments that I’m sure all parents get…regardless of how many children are trailing them through the grocery store…comments centered on how our children look. I am working so hard to model the importance of a happy, kind, and caring heart and the joy of curiosity. Your braided pigtails and the adorable ruffle shirt you have on are no comparison to who you are as a person.

Even being sensitive to this topic, I know it’s hard. When I see the most adorable chubby-cheeked kiddo, the first thought that comes to my mind usually is, “What a CUTIE PIE you have there!”

Since having children, I’ve tried to reform myself. My stock comment is usually along the lines of “What curious eyes you have! I bet you love to learn!” Or I might pick up on a clue about something the child is wearing. “I see you have a kitty cat on your shirt. Do you have a kitty at home? What’s your kitty’s name? We have a kitty, too!”

I know I can’t count on that kind of engaging conversation from the general public. It’s up to me to respond to the “What pretty little girls you are!” comments with “And they’re super smart, too!” or “They’re beautiful on the inside, too!”

That, I’ve learned to handle.

What I think is toughest to deal with is when someone makes a comment about one of our girls in comparison to the other.

Our girls are “very” fraternal, as I like to say…one has blue eyes and fair skin, and the other has brown eyes and a more olive complexion. B’s eyes are pretty piercing, and they get a lot of attention. It’s happened more than once that we’ve heard, “WOW! What amazing blue eyes you have! They are so beautiful!” And then the person turns to A, seemingly as an afterthought, and says something like, “Oh, and you have pretty brown eyes.”

Seriously???

Then I feel like I’m in the precarious position of trying to support that both my girls are beautiful, before I can even try to divert the conversation away from the physical.

I love taking my girls grocery shopping, as I think it can be a great educational exercise. In addition to the meal planning, list making, coupon cutting, and produce weighing, I like that the girls get to practice their manners with a cross-section of people we encounter.

Maybe I should look at it as having twins just makes for more learning opportunities as we navigate what sometimes feels like a landmine of comments.

Do you have any stock responses to comments about your children? How do you handle when people try to compare them to each other?

MandyE is a SAHM to 4 1/2-year old fraternal twin girls. She blogs about their adventures and reflections on parenthood at Twin Trials and Triumphs.

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Twice Upon a Time: A Fairy Tale Weekend in Twinsburg, Ohio

August 4, 2013August 4, 2013Jen Wood
Celebrations, Fraternal, Higher-Order Multiples, Identical, Multiples in the News, Parenting, Travel5 Comments

We just returned home from our family’s 4th annual trip to Twinsburg, OH for the Annual Twins Days Festival. My Twin Boys are three, we went the first time when they were 9 months old. I have written here on HDYDI about Twins Days before, but it is just so much fun I wanted to share it again. Every year the festival is the first full weekend in August in the Ohio town of Twinsburg. (Near Cleveland) Twins (and triplets and more!) come from around the world to celebrate their twinship, meet other twins and partake in the festivities. It is such a fun weekend and we have met so many amazing people. So many adult twins we have met have shared how special the weekend is to them, and one duo we met said how the rest of the people in their family have weddings and birthdays and celebrations, but for them, Twins Days is their best time.

We drive from Chicago for the weekend, leaving early Friday morning, arriving in time for the Welcome Wiener Roast for twins and their families on Friday evening. Waiting in line that evening to pick up our registration packet for our boys, a new mom of twins behind me in line said she couldn’t stop giggling and staring, she said it felt like the Twilight Zone where there was two of everyone. I told her we felt the same way our first year, as non-twins my husband and I actually felt sad at the end of the weekend to not have a twin. We loved how much everyone enjoyed and celebrated being a twin, and we wanted our boys to share in that celebration. We’ve been back every year since then.

Our boys are young and don’t really understand what it means to be a twin, so for our family, the highlight of the trip is always the Double Take Parade. Any twins who are registered for the festival are invited and encouraged to walk in the parade. Each year the festive has a theme, generally announced a few months in advance of the event. This year’s theme was fairy tales “Twice Upon a Time” so everyone was decked out in their finest fairy tale costumes. There are some that are quite elaborate with costumes and outfits, turning wagons and strollers into mini floats, but some twins just walk the route in matching street clothes. That’s the fun thing about Twins Days, even the adult twins dress alike for the weekend.

Here are some of my favorite shots from the parade. My boys are in Prince Charming outfits I made for them, and they even had tiny glass slippers they tried to fit on nearly every pair of princesses they could find. It was pretty, well, charming.

The parade isn’t like most. There are floats for sure, but the first few waves are just pairs of twins, usually in matching themed costumes, walking down the street. And the street is lined with people, shoulder to shoulder, some twins, others just locals coming to watch the parade or grab some candy.

After the parade there are plenty of photo opportunities. One set of twins generally asks another for a photo, then more and more join, two by two, until it is a huge group. These Cinderella and Prince Charming pairs were happy to include their tiny doppelgängers for a group photo. (and be sure my kids tried their glass slippers on those princesses too.

After the parade the festival opens, there are carnival rides, lots of food vendors, free Twin Pop popsicles, research study opportunities, a craft fair, a beer garden, and contests. My boys were in the theme costume contest. (the didn’t win.) but there are also contests for most-alike and least-alike twins, oldest twins and youngest twins, twins traveled from the furthest distance and more.

The youngest twins in Saturday’s contest were 3 weeks old, the oldest are 98 years young!

Then in the afternoon there is a break in the contests to take a group photo. We’ve been lucky the past two years to meet some very helpful older twins to wrangle mine for the photo since it takes about 30 minutes to get everyone into place for the group photo. My kids are sitting in the middle on the laps of their new friends.

A Charming Weekend indeed.

If anyone else was in Twinsburg this weekend and wants to share photos or experiences, we’d love to hear them. And mark your calendars for the first weekend in August next year, it’s definitely something every twin family should see at least once!

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