The Difference Between Raising Multiples and One

My friend Corinne has a cute blog called Momma Sassy. It is like a little magazine and she asked me to write about my experience having multiples and having one. I am going to reprint it here for my records, but make sure to check out her website. It is a fun one.

My name is Kelly and I have been married for 12 years. I have twin boys, Raef and Zach, who are 6 years old and a 5 month old named Eli. These are just a few observations about the difference between having twins and having one.

When you wake up in the middle of the night, you know for sure which baby you are holding because there is only one. Sometimes it would take me hours to realize that I was holding Zach, when I thought for sure it was Raef in my arms.

Baby slings/carriers are actually relevant this time around. When it was just me toting my twins around, those kinds of things were just out of the question.

When I go to the store to buy clothes for Eli, I don’t have to worry about the price so much. If the price tag says $10, it actually means $10. With my twins, $10 = $20. Yes, I know some stores will give you a twin discount, but it is really negligible and not very common.

Now it is half the diapers, no bottles (nothing to clean), no formula, and more money in my pocket.

I only need one crib, and I haven’t even gotten around to buying one yet. Eli is still sleeps in a portable crib.

Loading Eli into the car is a lot less stressful than when I had to do the same thing for my twins. I had to be very strategic about how I would put them into the car so that they were not left unattended in a parking lot. I would always start on the passenger side and put Zach in and then pull Raef out of the stroller and put him in his car seat on the driver’s side. Then I could quickly put the stroller away and get in the car myself. There was one time when I was getting ready to put them in the car and the stroller started to roll away by itself. Both of my boys almost took a dangerous jaunt through a parking lot. Like I said, loading the kids in the car could get stressful.

I only had a two-stop limit before I had to go home. Loading and unloading and loading and unloading was a chore in and of itself. That is why I was so grateful for Super Wal-Mart. I could get everything in one store…Hallelujiah!

Grocery shopping was a major ordeal as well. When they were tiny I would just wait for my husband to get home and then go shopping. However, as soon as Raef was old enough to sit up by himself I devised a new strategy that worked really well. I would put him in the shopping cart and then put Zach in a backpack. It was great. I was the ultimate multi-tasker.

I always wished that they sold baby food by the case because I would buy at least 50 jars in one trip and it was a pain to put it in the cart, take it out of the cart, put it back in the cart, etc. I just bought baby food for Eli today and I noticed that the volume was significantly less.

If Eli gets fussy, I can pick him up and haul him around the house and still do other things. When one of the twins got fussy, I would pick him up but I couldn’t really go anywhere because I had to watch the other one also. I was always a little bit envious of Gumby. His skills would have come in handy, for sure.

My kids have always been great sleepers, so I really can’t complain about that.

Whenever my kids decided to get sick it was always, always Friday afternoon as soon as the doctor’s office had closed. It was quite a juggling act to get them to the Urgent Care and still take care of the other one. And then when there was an accident, you really have to improvise.

One time, and I have absolutely no idea how this happened, Zach lodged his head in between the slats of a stool and I could not get his head out. He was stuck inside the stool. I really freaked out. He was probably a little over a year old. He was crying and Raef was really crying because he was worried for his brother. I had to put Raef behind the gate so he wouldn’t interfere in our extraction efforts. Then I ran across the street frantically to get my neighbor. I had to leave the kids where they were. When we got back, I tried lubing him up with EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) to pull him out. It did not work. So then I got a small hack saw and sawed the slat off, with my neighbor holding Zach down, and I was able to extricate him. I was very upset from this so I sent Raef back with my friend and then gave Zach a bath and tried to calm myself down. Who knew a regular old stool could be so diabolically dangerous? If this type of thing happens to Eli, I can have one of my twins hold him down while I saw. I already have the experience I need to deal with this kind of crisis, no EVOO needed.

The twins always have a friend, which really came in handy the older they got. I will have to put more effort into reaching out to other kids Eli’s age or he will probably drive me crazy.

My husband was much more involved in the nurturing of the twins. He was able to bottle-feed one of them every day and he changed a lot more diapers. He did so much. With Eli, the burden is so small that I do just about everything and I don’t really think about it. I nurse him exclusively, so no bottles are needed. Diapers seem almost non-existent compared to having two babies so Rinar doesn’t need to do very much. Don’t get me wrong, he wants to take care of Eli any chance he gets, but the chances are quite a bit less than before. I haven’t asked him how he feels about that, but I probably should. I wonder if he misses those moments that he had with the twins, when it comes to Eli?

I am very grateful I had my twins first. A single birth is soooo much easier. I would dread doing it the other way around. Kudos to anyone in that boat!