The physical exhaustion adds strain to an already stressful situation as parents learn to cope with multiple babies. It is hard enough to function when well-rested, but parents of twins must learn to survive on shots of sleep measured in minutes rather than hours.
Severe Fatigue
Extreme fatigue is the most commonly reported complaint during pregnancy with multiples. Sleepiness, lethargy, and exhaustion during the first trimester can be enhanced because the body is working overtime to nurture more than one baby.
Moms of multiples will tell you that the first three to four months is a stage of pure survival mode and sleep deprivation. The babies are colicky, gassy, and don't even offer a smile in return. Tandem breastfeeding is awkward, and you still have to cradle their heads.
Parents Of Twins Run Higher Risk Of Depression Than Other New Parents : Shots - Health News Expectant parents of twins and other multiples may be ready for the joy and extra physical demands of caring for more than one baby. But few know the risk of depression and anxiety runs higher, too.
The reality is that raising multiples is hard. You have double or triple the feeding, diapering, and laundry and, as a result, less time to spend cuddling and getting to know each baby. To be sure, there will be days when you feel as if you're walking up a down escalator.
“Having twins is not twice as hard—it's exponentially more difficult,” says Natalie Diaz, author of What To Do When You're Having Two and CEO of Twiniversity, a global support network for parents of twins.
Age. According to the Office on Women's Health , women who are aged 30 years or older are more likely to conceive twins. The reason for this is that women of this age are more likely than younger women to release more than one egg during their reproductive cycle.
For women born 1870-1899, moms of twins averaged reproductive spans of 14 years 11 months versus 14 years for singleton moms. Both results were statistically significant. Moms of twins also were older at the time of their last birth.
This is called co-bedding and is perfectly safe. In fact, putting twins in the same cot can help them regulate their body temperatures and sleep cycles, and can soothe them and their twin.
It is likely that twins' awareness of one another starts sooner than seven or eight months of age. An article by the late doctor, T. Berry Brazelton, observed that at age three to four months, an infant identical female twin seemed disoriented when her sister was removed from the room.
Caring for twin babies is a lot of work. There are two mouths to feed, two diapers to change and two different cries to soothe. So don't be afraid to get help from friends, family or a nanny.
Measures included actigraphy, sleep diaries, and standardized instruments for fatigue, sleep quality, and depression. According to the results, by the time the twins reached full-term, mothers were sleeping an average of 5.4 hours in a 24-hour period, with over 70 percent reporting less than six hours of sleep.
With a twin pregnancy, your body makes high levels of pregnancy hormones. So morning sickness may come on earlier and stronger than if you were carrying a single baby. You may also have earlier and more intense symptoms from pregnancy, like swelling, heartburn, leg cramps, bladder discomfort, and sleep problems.
Twins and other multiple-birth individuals can suffer from much deeper and troubling loneliness than single-born individuals. Separation anxiety, which often begins at birth, is the underlying cause of loneliness for twins.
It is estimated that 1 in 250 natural pregnancies will naturally result in twins. While twin pregnancies can happen by chance, there are some factors that may increase your odds of having two babies at the same time. Let's learn about twins!
Monoamniotic-monochorionic Twins
These types of twins share a chorion, placenta, and an amniotic sac. This is the rarest type of twin, and it means a riskier pregnancy as the babies can get tangled in their own umbilical cords.
For a given pregnancy, the odds of conceiving fraternal twins are only determined by the mother's genetics, not the father's.
Longer lives
When analyzing the data by gender, the researchers found that female identical twins lived, on average, about 63.4 years, whereas female fraternal twins lived about 61.4 years and the general Danish female population lived about 58.8 years, Sharrow said.
A little more than half of twin pregnancies end in preterm delivery (before 37 weeks). While 40 weeks is the full gestation period of the average pregnancy, most twin pregnancies are delivered at approximately 36 weeks (range 32-38 weeks depending on the type of twin pregnancy).
The authors of the study believe the reason twins live longer may be because of the social support they provide each other, and the psychological and health benefits that come with that social connection. "There is benefit to having someone who is socially close to you who is looking out for you," Sharrow said.
Some twin researchers believe that a tightly bonded, close relationship between twins can actually impede their ability to develop outside friendships since peers have a harder time breaking the “twin code.” Since twins spend more time with each other than with their parents, siblings, and other peers, they often ...
A:Twins are not slow learners. It has been observed that they become a self-sufficient pair, communicating between themselves very effectively, through gesture and speech.
Maureen Healy, an expert on sensitive children and author of Growing Happy Kids, tells Romper that twins have a bond that is oftentimes unexplainable and are closer than typical siblings — whether they're fraternal or identical. Healy says a lot of experts believe it's because this closeness is rooted in genetics.