How to Pee While Holding a Baby

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One of my Facebook mommy groups just had a fairly lengthy discussion about what to do when you have to pee in public and there’s nowhere to put your kid. With two babies at once, I face this dilemma on a fairly regular basis. Usually when I’m alone I’m wearing one or both babies. So I just pee normally, but with one or more babies attached to my chest or back. If I have a cart or stroller, I wheel it into the handicapped stall, which sometimes means peeing with the door open because not all of the stalls will accommodate something that size with a closed door.

But sometimes I just have one baby and he’s in my arms. Or I’m wearing one and holding the other. Here’s how to pee while holding a baby, in seven easy steps: Continue reading →

Working Mom Wednesday: I Miss My Babies

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At 7:15 Monday morning, I left my house for my first-ever week-long work trip, and the longest I have been away from the boys since their birth. It’s horrible. I miss them so much that it literally hurts. I physically ache for them. I feel like I am missing a limb and there is phantom pain where it once was.

I desperately needed a break. After months of full-time mommy duty AND full-time employee duty AND packing for our upcoming move from Virginia to Florida while Daddy-in-Training has been working out of state 4-5 days (and nights) out of every week, I was exhausted and emotionally drained. The prospect of 4 straight nights of uninterrupted sleep and 5 straight days of taking care of only myself sounded like heaven. The reality doesn’t exactly measure up.

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Mythbuster Monday: “You’ll Never Have Money Again” — 9 Ways to Live Well and Save Money with a Baby

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Each week in Mythbuster Monday, we tackle some of the crazy and often discouraging stuff people tell parents — especially expectant and new moms. Want to request a post on a specific parenting myth ? Contact us with your idea!

Among the many disheartening pieces of “advice” I received while I was pregnant with my twins was this gem: “Have fun now, because you’ll never be able to afford it later. It was particularly awesome because my pregnancy was so incredibly miserable that I couldn’t even have had fun if I wanted to. So basically they were telling me in yet another fun and exciting way that my life was basically over.

Here’s the reality: Babies are expensive. Two babies the same age, which means you can’t rely on your older kids’ hand-me-downs, is particularly expensive. But if you’re smart about it, you can maintain a decent quality of life even on a budget. Although my pregnancy was anything but fun, my life with twinfants has pretty much been a blast. I’m not eating lobster at the Ritz every night, but we can afford the necessities and a little extra, too, and that’s more than anyone really needs.

Here are nine ideas for cutting corners without cutting out all the good stuff. Continue reading →

Throwdown Thursday: Your Baby is Not a Diva

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Throwdown Thursday is a biweekly-ish feature wherein we discuss controversial parenting topics. Respectful disagreement is welcome in the comments! Have a request for a topic? Contact us with your idea!

I keep seeing moms referring to their baby girls as “divas” and I’m like, seriously? She’s not a diva. She’s a BABY. Unless she’s actually a celebrated female vocalist (the traditional sense of the word), in which case you can tell me to shove it, you are projecting inappropriately onto your child. Oh, unless you think she has an exaggerated sense of self-importance and inappropriately elevated self-image and generally acts like a spoiled brat , in which case you need a reality check. SHE’S A BABY and babies need what they need. This does not make them divas. What does make them divas is parents who inappropriately cater to every whim and tell them over and over again that they’re divas!

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Twin Tips Tuesday: How to Get More Sleep When You Have Twins (or more!)

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The first six weeks or so after my twins came home from the hospital were a level of exhaustion and insanity I have never known, and do not ever wish to know again (although honestly, having another set of twins in the future wouldn’t be the end of my world — don’t tell Daddy-in-Training). I routinely cried in the middle of the night while trying to feed babies because I. Was. Just. So. Tired.

Last Monday, we busted the myth that once you have a baby you’ll never sleep again. But parents of multiples have a unique situation. As I tried to explain to my friends with a single baby who thought they were tired, “You have it easy. Once your baby stops screaming, you get a break. When my baby stops screaming, my other baby is still screaming. Wanna trade?”

All babies are exhausting, but at least when there’s just one baby the parents have a leg up in numbers if nothing else. Steve Volk put it it just right in his recent Philly Post article:

Two Parents vs. One Baby = parents win.

You can wake up on Saturday and trade off childcare. Dad can handle the newborn from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.! Then he can visit the gym, run a few errands and spend the night cooing over little junior. But if these same people were raising twins, the teams would be even.

Two Parents vs. Two Babies = hopeless deadlock.

Once the babies hit 6 weeks post-due-date, though, things get much easier. (At least, they did for me. It sounds like good ol’ Steve is still pretty miserable.) That’s when the babies’ sleep starts to consolidate into longer and more predictable blocks of time, and they begin adjusting to more waking during the day and more sleeping at night. And not a moment too soon, am I right?

I’ve found a few sleep strategies that work really well for the Family-in-Training. Here they are, in no particular order. Continue reading →