More Advice...

I just thought of a few more pieces of advice for pregnant-with-twins women...

• Have your baby showers early! Everyone thought I was nuts for having my first one at 22 weeks and my last one at 26 weeks. The first one was out-of-town, so I wanted to get the travelling over with quickly. Plus, we had Christmas to deal with so I had it the first week of December so it wouldn't interfere with people's holiday plans. My last one was here in Austin, and I ended up in the hospital with complications less than 2 weeks later. So it was just in the nick of time! Plus, since I had them early it gave me the freedom of time to really organize the nursery, assess what I still needed, and write my thank you notes. All of this once again has to do with the comparison of singleton vs. twin pregnancies. You really can't wait until well into your third trimester like so many singleton ladies do. You might find yourself in my situation...not having much of a third trimester.
• Have a communications liaison. This is a lesson I learned from my cousin who had twins in September. My very good friend Lee Anne has been mine. I gave her a list of people I wanted emailed and a small handful of older relatives (that don't do email) to be called. This way hubby or my mom could make only one phone call (to her) and she could send out the update emails, field the phone calls and reply to questions in people's email replies. We did this when I ended up in the hospital two weeks ago, and it went beautifully. This way me, Hubby and my mom weren't swamped with a million calls of "What's going on? How is Shannon? How are the babies? What did the doctor say? When will those test results be in?" etc. I had her nicely mention in the email for folks not to call my cell number or direct hospital number. My cousin went through a nightmare of constantly ringing phones (both hospital landline and all the cell phones) while she was having needles stuck in her arms or getting updates while her doc was in the room. All of this may sound impersonal to you, but I come from a very large family...plus all of my old co-workers and clients have kept up with my pregnancy; Hubby's co-workers, friends and clients have kept up; a ton of family friends and neighbors; even my Mom's co-workers, friends and clients. It adds up to over 100 people who have insisted on immediate notification...this was the only system that would work and keep us sane. Lee Anne has been a God-sent. I am going to have to treat her to a very nice gift or spa package once all of this is over.
• Am I the only one who has found it frustrating that no one has written a week-by-week pregnancy book for twins? I have one for singletons, but there is nothing out there for twins. The same can be said for baby books. I ended up buying a baby book for each twin, but it would have been nice to do one big book.