The Ups and Downs of Twins: The First Four Weeks for a Dad

I didn't really know what to expect when my twins turned up.

I knew a little, I thought. We already had a two year old son, and bringing him home from the hospital was quite an experience for us all. His screaming that first night - about 14 straight hours of it - has stuck with me, and even now that night remains the worst we have had with any of our children.

We went to a special multiple-birth ante-natal class, to gave us a little idea about what we should expect. It was focused on likely delivery scenarios, as well as breastfeeding, and we had a chance to chat to a mum of twins.

We even had friends with twins, and a pair of twins in my family, and both sets of parents were around to offer some tips, thoughts, and terrifying horror stories. That is, when they weren't too sleepy to talk to us at all ...

It's fair to say we had some information, pieced together from all of these sources. But very little of it was geared towards dads. So, I thought I'd share my experienced from the first few weeks with our beautiful identical twin daughters. As of the time of writing this, they are eight weeks old.

With minimal further ado, and in a vaguely chronological order, here are the things I wish I'd known sooner - specifics marked in bold below. If you're in a hurry - maybe your twins are already here! - skip to the bottom for the TL;DR.

And, since I'm sure most of you are only really interested in the cute baby pictures, here are Evelyn and Dorothy:

The Delivery

11 January 2016   |   twins, family