Co-Bedding - Next to me

[teschaeffer]

I am 28+4 with my DCDA twins (di/di in the USA) and I am in the U.K. I don’t know about elsewhere but here they recommend co-bedding for twins (as long as the babies like it and they aren’t annoying one another).

We have a chicco next to me and a cotbed (from our first).

The issue I am having (and I know I am super fortunate to be in the position to even have this issue) is that we have hired a live in maternity nurse for the first 12 weeks. She will be working 5 days per week and babies will be sleeping in with her in the nursery on those nights.

With our first, on the nights we had a night nanny, it was very easy to wheel the next to me back and forth between the nursery and our room but a cotbed is a whole different proposition.

I’ve seen conflicting advice about whether a next to me is suitable for twin co-bedding in the early weeks. I had assumed it would be too small but I’ve found lots of twin parents saying they used it for 6/9/12 weeks. If that is an option, I would certainly like to try.

Any thoughts?

 

[one]

@teschaeffer We have the redkite Una next to me and there’s plenty of room for both our twins, our plan is to keep them together for around 10 weeks and then we have another next to me to split them as they’ll be rolling and likely to annoy each other and at that point I think it’ll be getting snug.

I have been asked by our health visitor (also UK based) about the space between them when they share, she didn’t seem as into them sharing and just mentioned sage sleep. They’re happy and somehow end up snuggled up even if we leave space between them, our other option is to try one at either end.

 

[peterjames0510]

@teschaeffer We used our next to me for about 6 weeks. Our twins were average twin size at 5lb 4 and 5lb 6 and they started off next to each other with their feet on the long side of the crib, then when they got too long we swapped them so they had their feet on opposite ends. Eventually it got a little too cramped and we now have them in 2 next to me’s, one either side of the bed. Our twins are definitely tall babies and outgrew sharing earlier than a lot of twins do. Our midwives recommended putting them together for the early weeks, they referred us to the lullaby trust safe sleep for twins. I loved it and I did cry on the last night they were in the same bed before we had to separate them.

 

[loneranger]

@teschaeffer Depends on the size of the twins how long they'll fit in together, but they should fit at least to start off with. Ours were put in one together in the hospital, and would have been able to stay in it until they started rolling easily (they were born 36+6, but were 1800g and 2100g so tiny). Make sure you have a back up available, but if you still have the one from your first there's no reason not to use it to start off with.

 

[princeadewale]

@teschaeffer We used a travel cot for our boys to sleep in. We thought it would last longer than a next to me. If you used a travel cot it’s really light to move between rooms.

 

[teschaeffer]

@princeadewale We have a travel cot that doubles as a play pen. We intend to keep that downstairs to put the twins in during the day when I need to keep them safe from their big brother (who was 2 at the end of Dec)

 

[teschaeffer]

Thank you everyone! I will give the next to me a go to begin with and see how we go. My first was a premie (33+4) and when he came home from the hospital at 35+1 the next to me seemed huge so if these babies are a similar size to him then I think we would get a few weeks out of it