When Someone You Know is Having Twins "I just got home from the ultrasound. The doctor says it’s twins!" If someone close to you--your daughter, your sister, your best friend--says those words, your first reaction might be, "Oh, cool! How cute!" Your second reaction should be to create a practical plan for helping . . . because new parents of multiples need all the help they can get. Twin newborns are not just twice as difficult as singletons. Conservatively, I would estimate that they are four times as difficult. First, it is likely that the mother will take longer to recover from the birth-especially if she had a Caesarian section, which is much more probable with twins. Even with a normal delivery, she has been under a considerable physical strain in the last weeks of her pregnancy. Second, it is also quite likely that the babies will be challenged in some way. They may be actually premature or just "light for dates". Third, and perhaps most important, is that, even when everybody is healthy, all the difficult things you must do to care for one newborn you must simultaneously do for another newborn, when you just don’t have enough hands and you are doubly sleep deprived. Even identical twins don’t communicate about their schedules for the benefit of their parents. In fact, it sometimes feels as if they are conspiring to make things as difficult as possible!! Our twins are 12 months old now, and crawling and cruising and walking and feeding themselves, and things have gotten easier. But for the first nine months or so, we felt as if we were barely hanging on by our fingernails--and we had extra help! Our household has three adults, we called in lots of favors, and we hired mother’s helps with abandon. How can you help? Perhaps the single most useful thing you can do is coordinate the resources of the family’s friends and relations. Before the babies are born, put together a roster of helpers and get contact information from the parents. (Since twins are apt to be early, get this arranged well before the official due date.) Then make a list of chores and assign them to the folks on the roster. Anyone who says, "Let me know if there is anything I can do," should be added! Because there will be plenty to do. Here are some of the possible items on the chore list. -> Milk run. If a baby has to stay in the hospital after the mother goes home, and she is breastfeeding, helpers can do the "milk runs" . . . taking pumped breast milk to the hospital. -> Ordinary housekeeping. With newborn twins, everyday housekeeping gets short shrift. So washing dishes, doing laundry, emptying diaper pails, getting the recycling down to the curb, emptying wastebaskets, and so forth, are greatly appreciated. Especially laundry! New mothers and newborn babies are messy! Receiving blankets, burp cloths, baby clothes, bassinet sheets, nursing pads, bras and underpants all need frequent washing. A pile of neatly folded clean laundry is a real boon. Delegate someone to water and tend bouquets--which are much more welcome if they don’t mean extra work! -> Cooking. Bringing in a simple prepared meal and putting it on the table with the tools wherewith to eat it is a wonderful gift. Check first to see if there are foods the nursing mother is avoiding. Make sure the meal is ready to eat on time . . . a mother nursing twins needs to eat and it is not helpful to make her wait for her meal while the cook does something unnecessarily fancy. It is probably okay for the cook to sit down with the parents, but he or she should remember this is not a dinner party. It would be more helpful to walk a fussy baby while the parents eat. Also, the kitchen should be left in a usable state--ideally, tidier than it was found. The parents will not appreciate having to wash an extra place setting and scrub every pan in the house after the cook goes home! -> Feedings. Helping the nursing mother for the last feeding at night, so that her partner or spouse can get a couple of hours extra sleep and be refreshed and ready to help with the middle of the night feeding. Or, if there’s a night owl on the roster, have him or her doze on the couch or watch late-night TV and help with the two a.m. feeding. If the mother is not breastfeeding, bottle feedings can be done by helpers while the parents get some much needed sleep. -> Baby walking and baby holding. Weather and the babies’ health permitting, just taking the recently-fed babies out in the stroller for twenty minutes can give exhausted parents a breather. Often, a newborn will sleep better in contact with a human. Provide a pair of arms and a warm chest for a baby’s nap if the parents wish. Note that some new mothers don’t really want anyone else holding their babies. This preference should be respected if present. -> Phone calls, mail and email. A volunteer can make phone calls and send email announcing the births. Lick envelopes, stamp, and mail birth announcements. Bring in the mail. A volunteer can field calls from well-wishers, to protect the parents’ sleep in those first frantic days. -> Equipment. You can borrow or buy and set up a number of gadgets and tools which can make the job of parenting easier. An intercom or a pair of family-radio-service-type walkie-talkies is useful. Just being able to talk to each other from different parts of the house saves steps or shouting that can wake a sleeping baby. Baby monitors are also helpful . . . more than one if possible, for greater flexibility. Baby swings and vibrating baby seats are invaluable (but should not of course be a substitute for parental attention for more than brief periods). Nursing pillows designed for twins are helpful, as are sling baby carriers. -> Errands. The number of supplies new twins need boggles the mind. Diaper rash cream, diapers, and baby wipes all run out at the least convenient moment. Prescriptions or over-the-counter medications need to be fetched, sometimes urgently. And then of course there are the supplies every household needs: food, toilet paper, stamps . . . Draft responsible helpers to shop for and deliver these items every couple of days. -> Help with visitors. If family members are coming in from out of town, helpers can pick them up at the airport or station and take them back at the end of the visit. They can make up beds and launder linens. For all of the suggestions above, helpers should be ready to use their own good judgment. It is not real help if the parents have to answer countless questions about the tasks. If they have to give detailed instructions, they might almost as well have performed the chore themselves. The kinds of help I have suggested here continue to be very useful even after the babies are older . . . don’t call off the troops or drop the schedule after only a month or two. The occasional "catered" dinner will be very welcome even to parents of toddlers. If you can help in some of the ways I’ve suggested, you will give new parents of twins something far more valuable and far more appreciated than the most expensive baby gift you could buy. If you are the one who is having twins, give a copy of this article to all your friends and relations!