The twins at five months

The twins are officially five months old today! We stopped counting in weeks quite a while ago… I think we’re on 23 weeks now, but I’m unsure! It still feels like the hospital days were an eternity ago, but they are doing so well that nobody would think that they were premature or so tiny at birth! So proud of them…

 

Feeding. They are still feeding every three hours… even at night! I don’t know why, but Elisa is waking up twice a night again for feeding. We’re struggling to get her to drink more than 160ml before bed, which makes her wake more often. Eric drinks a full 220ml before bed, so he sleeps better. During the rest of the day they vary between 180ml and 220ml, although Elisa is on the lower side.

I attended a two hour long class on weaning a few weeks back, although the twins aren’t ready for weaning yet. We’re definitely going to wait till 6 months old… No rush to get into all the mess of solid foods! The course was all right however I don’t think they answered any of the real questions that we had. I think I’m going to follow the advice from the Anabel Karmel book, which has recipes and a schedule to follow. I like schedules. They make things easy 🙂

 

Sleeping. As I mentioned before, Elisa has started waking up twice every night now. They were waking up only once at around 3 or 4, but she’s wriggling a lot since around 1am and will wake up crying for food at 1:30 or 2am and then again at 5 or 6. Eric is normally happy and has actually slept through the whole night a couple of times. These days, though, if Elisa wakes up for a feed, we wake Eric up as well and feed him (and he will actually finish his bottle!)

During the day, they have about 4 naps pretty much coinciding with their feeds. Sometimes they sleep straight after the feed, and sometimes they play after the feed and nap afterwards.

Their bedtime routine has not changed at all from what we set it up, and they are still settling in very well after the bath and bottle, which is great because it makes our night time much easier!

 

Development. Both Eric and Elisa are now on size 3 nappies… they’ve been on size 3 for a while actually! We’re using Pampers Simply Dry, which are cheaper than other ones and so far we’re very happy with them. We have had a few leaks but I am sure that we would have had leak with any other nappy brand. We’ve used a few Huggies that we were given and had leaks with them too… The leaks are always of poo, not pee. And I think that we’re having leaks because they’re pooing once every two days so when they do, the poos tend to be explosive!

They both do lots of tummy time every day and now Elisa enjoys it as well (she didn’t like it at the beginning, but we persevered and she now likes it!). Eric loves it, and if you put your hands against his feet he pushes himself forward and it’s like he’s crawling! It’s so funny… We no longer use the bumbo seats… I don’t know why, but Eric never liked it and Elisa was struggling to sit on it.. it’s like she wasn’t fitting any more! (which is weird as those seats are for much bigger babies than Elisa!)

Both babies are “talking” a lot now. They even have conversations with us! If you utter a sound enough times at them, they will end up repeating it… And then they have their own conversations amongst themselves! It’s so cute to watch them…

Clothes wise, Eric is now full on 3-6 month old clothes, whereas Elisa varies between 0-3 and 3-6, depending on the piece of clothing (whether it has been washed and tumble dried many times, shrinking). I try to put them on “street clothes” everyday before their first feed of the day, however I must confess that I’ve been a bit lazy in the last few days and they’ve been just wearing sleepsuits all day. They are so easy and comfortable! Plus, we’re not going out much lately, so I tend to choose the easy option.

 

Socialising. I must say that with the weather turning into full Autumn mode, we haven’t been going out much. In addition to that, in the last three or four last times that we’ve gone out, Eric has had crying fits out of the blue… It puts a lot of pressure in an already stressful situation for me. Which is weird because they used to be very good when we went out. Most of the times they would just sleep. But because their naps are much shorter these days, they spend a lot of the time awake and one of the twins mums that I met one of the last times said that they’re probably bored just sitting in the pushchair.

I still don’t like feeding them on the go, so I always try to time the outings around their feeds but it doesn’t always work out. If for instance my friends decide to meet up at 11, but the twins are due a feed a 11:30, then the earliest I can make it into town is around 12:30, by which time they’re probably thinking of going home. I am hoping that everything gets easier when they are on solid food. I honestly believe that feeding them on the go when they’ve been weaned will be easier, as that means that they’ll be sitting up and I can just position them in two high chairs in front of me and alternate the spoonfulls. Surely that’s easier than holding two bottles at the same time!

 

Health. They had all three sets of immunisations without any major issues. To be honest, I was so proud of them after their third set as they hardly cried and never got a fever or anything! The next set of vaccines will be at one year old…

Elisa had a gunky eye for quite a long time. Eventually we had it tested and it turned out that it was conjunctivitis so we had another course of drops, which did the job and her eye has now been completely cleared for about three weeks!

The last time the twins were at the weigh in clinic was last week, and their latest weights are: Eric 7.02kg and Elisa 6.22kg. The gap between them is getting smaller! From 6 months onwards they only need to be weighed every two months rather than monthly, so that will make it easier on me too! (I like going to the Discovery Centre clinic because I know the health visitor there, but going into town is harder than going into the community centre, for example)

 

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And this is it for now. Not sure why, but I haven’t been feeling 100% in the last few days. I am finding getting up twice a night very tough again and it gets me into a very bad mood. I don’t think my bad mood translates in my care to the twins, but I am not the most pleasant person to be around. Sorry Jon 🙁