Sharing Bottles, Organizing Clothes etc etc

Bottles -
I am interested to know if any of you share bottles between the babies. My babies consistently eat inconsistently. One feed they eat 130 mils and the next they eat 180. I always make 150 mils but I hate throwing out perfectly good milk. Would you feed the next baby out of that same bottle and just top it up?

Clothes -
I have a boy and a girl but they share a bedroom. I am finding it hard to organize their clothes despite having a great amount of closet space and an armoire. I find they are growing quickly and sometimes I miss getting them into outfits from the previous size. How do you organize their clothes? The sizing is not the same for different brands... my three month olds are in six month clothing already.

Sleeping/Feeding -
I am trying to get them onto a similar schedule, although I don't want to force them. We tried to wake one up to eat when the other one gets hungry but they refuse to eat when we do that. Any other suggestions? I really need this to happen since I currently have help almost around the clock but that will be ending shortly and my husband will be going back to work full time soon and I am not well enough to be up multiple times at night.

I am sure I'll have much more to ask shortly since my brain is starting to emerge from the fog. TIA, Lydia

 

Hi there

I also have B/G twins and they are so different! Mine are almost 8 months old. To answer your questions:

Bottles - I always use separate bottles and I change the teat if I give what´s left over to the other baby. I only re-use the milk if it´s in-between feeds, i.e. no more than 4 hours (mine eat every 4 hours or so). I make all my bottles with room temp bottled water and I make them just before the feed with the exception of the first morning feed which I leave pre-made overnight. If they don´t finish that bottle, then I throw it away.

Clothes - mine outgrow their clothes really fast too. I have a wardrobe and have DD´s stuff in the left-hand side & DS´s stuff in the middle. They share the right-hand side (shoes, bigger clothes, etc, go in there). All the stuff they have outgrown goes to MIL´s who has loads of storage space!

Sleeping/Feeding - When they were small, I let mine have their own routine as they had different sleeping patterns. DD used to wake at 9am but DS at 7am and whilst its a pain having a baby on the go all the time, they seemed to thrive better that way. It started to change as they got older. I have to admit that while I was on holiday over Xmas, I would feed DS then wake DD for her food and had no problems. That way they were on the same schedule and I got a little break during the day during nap time. Now DS wakes DD up (he isn´t quiet in the mornings!!) so they are often 20-30 mins apart which is useful when I´m alone! In your shoes, I´d let them mark their times and then try and get them similar when they´re older. That´s worked for me anyway.

GL!

 

My boys are getting "old" so I'll try to remember.

Bottles: The first 3 months we were part of a formula study and I didn't care if I wasted formula...it was free. When I started paying for it, you bet we shared bottles! The older they got, the more lax I was about reusing bottles. By the time they were 11 months, they used one bottle a day and I just kept making enough to top it off. Now, on sippy cups, we use one cup a day. I'm just really a stickler about putting it in the fridge as soon as they are finished with it.

Clothes: My mom made me size dividers for the closet. This is a really blurry picture, but maybe you can see the "6-9" yellow thing on the shelf. This allowed me to move things that weren't "true" sizes to other sections. I was/am also able to see if I need more things for them in bigger sizes. If you have a sliding closet door, you could make one half girl/one half boy. Something like this might be helpful too.

Sleeping/Feeding: I'm sorry I don't have any advice. My boys were in the NICU for a month and they kept them on a tight schedule. We did the same when they came home and it's been like that ever since.

 

Bottles-we personally dont let ours share...some moms do though, its a personal decision. If you feel comfortable doing it go for it.

Clothes-when they were born we had all the newborn and 0-3 month clothes out. They each have their own dresser and as for the closet his on the left hers on the right gender neutral in the middle. Babies R Us makes dividers that have the sizes on them if thats something that might help. Now they are in 6 month clothes so we have the 6 month clothes and 9 month clothes out.

Sleeping/feeding-We were lucky and ours put themselves on the same schedule and they have been since birth. I would say just keep trying. When one wakes wake the other when one eats try to feed the other. Although like pp mentioned some twins are just on their own time.

 

Bottles - We didn't share, but that probably has more to do with us feeding both babies at the same time than any philosopical opposition to feeding them out of the same bottle. Though I think I probably would at least change bottle tops (nipples and rings). When I feed them solids - I use one bowl and one spoon. Truthfully they slobber all over the same toys so they trade cooties anyways.

Clothes - I keep the current size clothes and one up in the dresser and have a seperate space for larger clothes. When the smaller size starts getting tight I pull it out and bring in the next size. They have always worn 2 sizes in the same timeframe. In all the brands we buy there hasn't been that drastic a difference between the 0-3 and 3-6 for example. And when the 0-3s were getting snug the 6-9's were starting to fit. Sizes can also vary widely by brand. Before long you will just know which ones run big and which ones run small. Until you get the knack in your head compare them to their current clothes no matter what size they say they are and go by that instead of the tag.

Feeding - We have always had the babies on the same schedule. If one was ready to eat we fed both of them. And we absolutely did it in the middle of the night. Otherwise just as my eyelids were closing the second baby would be up and I would never have gotten any sleep.

 

We have boy girl twins also. We do not let them share a bottle we just make them more if they really want it. My girl developed thrush so we were already cautious now we were really cautious. We also premake all the bottles we will need for the day we use the Dr brown pitcher to make them all it is fast and easy to use. When you are tired you can just go grab one and put it in the warmer. I try when we come home or receive clothes to put them in the appropiate bag label in the closet. That way when they get ready just get the bag out and wash and put in there draws. They have always been on the same schedule. But I have found that I can adjust the schedule by 20 -30 mins at the most. hope this helps

 

As for bottles, I kept each one's separate. I would save what was left from each boy, if any, and offer a left over bottle late in the day with that boy's leftover milk. HOpefully that made sense...it wasn't a germ issue for me, it was keeping up with who ate what for the day.

My boys share a dresser (9 drawers)...top drawers which are smaller were for socks, robeez, bibs, etc. The far left middle drawer was for shirts for their current size. Middle middle drawer was for current size sleepers and right drawer was for current size pants. The bottom left drawer had the next size up shirts, middle bottom had sleepers the next size up, and right bottom had pants next size up. Anything larger than next size up went in a bag in the closet and was marked for that size. As they grew out of a size, I emptied that drawer and would replace with the next size up so clothes were constantly rotated in/out of the dresser. The closet was organized by size. 0-3 on the far left, then 3-6, then 6-9, 9-12 and in the far right I would up anything bigger. I would wash all the close for the current size and one size up. Other clothes would stay in the closet and I would wash the next size up as I cleaned out the clothes they were outgrowing.

Mine ate on a fairly close schedule so I was able to wake the other to feed when one was hungry(note...my baby girl refuses to eat unless she is hungry...I can't wake her to feed when convenient for me...she makes the call...if my boys had been like that I think I would have gone crazy)!

Edited because I can't type today!

 

Mine are also inconsistent in how much they eat so we also share bottles (especially if one wakes up starving when you're 2/3 of the way through feeding the other). And they do share clothes, but they're both boys so that's easier.