Alice Beer - A Contented House with Twins

Contents

About the Book

A Contented House with Twins unites the UKs leading baby expert, Gina Ford, and the highly regarded television presenter Alice Beer, a mother of twin girls.

Discovering you are expecting twins is both an exciting and a thoroughly terrifying prospect. Within weeks of the arrival of her beautiful daughters, Alice found that she was screaming out for a routine and craving the knowledge of mothers who had been through it with two. This book is the result of those cries. Alices front-line experience of coping with twins is combined with Ginas highly successful parenting advice and, for the first time, her groundbreaking routines, specially adapted for twins. Together, they tackle the practical and emotional aspects of parenting two babies, including:

what you can expect in a multiple pregnancy

how to feed two at once

what to do when they each want a different story or both want a hug

how to cope with everyday practicalities: shopping, bathtime, and much more.

Alices humorous insights and Ginas essential advice, tips, support and successful routines will guarantee that parents enjoy their twins and get their lives back.

About the Authors

Gina Ford is Britains bestselling childcare author. Her first publication, The Contented Little Baby Book, has sold over a million copies and continues to be a bestseller. Ginas wise counsel and extensive experience has enabled her to guide countless families through the early years of parenthood. She runs a hugely popular website, www.contentedbaby.com, and offers a consultation service for parents wanting specialist help with their babies and toddlers. She has published over twenty parenting books.

Alice Beer is one of the countrys most recognisable names and faces in television. She has presented, produced and directed for the BBC since joining in 1987, working on series such as Watchdog, Healthcheck and Holiday.

For Phoebe and Dora

Introduction

My first book, The Contented Little Baby Book, was based on my experience of working with over 300 babies and their families. It very quickly became a bestseller through word of mouth recommendation and hundreds of thousands of parents around the world are now following my CLB routines. During my time as a maternity nurse, I also helped care for over 16 sets of twins, and advised hundreds more parents of twins. It was this experience, together with the feedback I get from parents through my consultancy work and my website, www.contentedbaby.com, that made me realise there was a real need to adapt the CLB routines for twins. And with the number of multiple births rising each year, it would seem there is now an even greater need.

I first met Alice when her babies were six months old, and was immediately impressed by the way she was following the CLB routines. It was obvious from the very beginning that she was a hands-on mum, who was managing to meet the needs of her babies in every way. Sharing our experiences of the highs and lows of caring for two babies quickly made us realise that combining my adaptation of the CLB routines with Alices experience of using them would be of great benefit to parents of twins. The result is this book. Each chapter begins with Alices account of the problems and successes she encountered with her own babies which is followed by my advice on raising contented little babies.

I have adapted my original routines on the basis that in the early days you will probably find it easier to feed or settle one twin before the other. The start times in the boxes at the beginning of each routine relate to the times you need to feed or settle the first twin and, as outlined in the routines themselves, you will need to do the same with the other twin 10 to 15 minutes later. Once you gain more confidence, however, you can adapt these times according to what suits your babies best.

Although at times having twins is undoubtedly more difficult than having just one baby, there is a huge amount of truth in the adage that twins are double the trouble but double the joy. I found it enormous fun working with twins and I hope that this book will enable help you to enjoy every minute with yours.

Gina Ford

If you are reading this book the chances are that you are expecting twins. Congratulations! Its a funny old journey you are starting, but I truly believe that we are the very lucky ones! Having twins is very special and through the exhaustion and complications somehow you will always remember that. Four years ago I was lying on my back with a 52-inch waist, yearning for a book like this, so I hope that with Ginas wisdom and Phoebe and Doras inspiration we can help you on your way.

Expecting twins is, of course, never quite accurate. Yes, there were two little blobs on the scan but when the word twins was mentioned, if I hadnt been horizontal you could have knocked me over with a pregnancy testing kit. This was not what we were expecting at all.

When my doctor first confirmed that I was pregnant, I had rushed to the bookshop and bought about five pregnancy manuals. When I discovered at seven weeks that it was twins, however, the books became largely irrelevant. The monthly photos of the smiling woman with one little lump looked nothing like my poor stretching body and the token twin chapter at the back of some of the books told me little more than that they would probably come early and I would probably need to take it easy.

As I was only two capsules into the packet of folic acid tablets when the blue line appeared in the pregnancy testing kit, I had to kick-start my healthy baby routine. I think this is even more important with two many expectant mothers of twins will agree that you can literally feel the little minxes robbing you of every nutrient as the pregnancy progresses. More vital than the advice of the nutritionist was the order of my obstetrician to take it easy which, being a stubborn Taurean control freak, I obviously ignored.

In the fifth month of pregnancy my partner, Paul, and I flew to Australia for Christmas, came home, moved house and I shot off to Spain filming. My body was incredible so strong, so vital, so fantastic in the way it was adapting to these little inhabitants. Unfortunately, my cervix was not so incredible. At 22 weeks, I was told that I would lose the babies if I did not take myself to bed and stay there for the next three months. I was in the middle of filming a series of Hot Property for Channel Five in Spain and immediately had to tell the series producer I couldnt get in a car to Heathrow, let alone fly to Malaga the next morning. Fortunately, when the chips were down and the lives of two little nearly babies were at stake, even the most hardened television types didnt question what I had to do. They recalled all their researchers, camera crews and contestants back from Spain and I went to bed.

Until now I had been concentrating on the pictures in the pregnancy books of the mother, obsessing about how much bigger than her I was. But now, under doctors orders and with the lives of our babies at risk, I became obsessed by the pictures of embryos. They were 22 weeks when they started threatening to come out, and damn it I couldnt find a book or a doctor on the Internet that would tell me they could possibly survive an entrance into the world at that stage.

I was allowed out of bed for a scan once a week to maintain my health, and out of bed once a day to maintain my sanity. It seemed that every time I got vertical I got bigger and each week when I dressed for the hospital, it was touch and go what I was going to get into. At first I did suffer a little one-baby envy, sitting in the waiting room at the foetal medicine centre surrounded by mothers-to-be looking glamorous in their wraparound dresses and little cropped cardigans. I had surgical stockings to stop me getting blood clots and Simon Cowell trousers from the second month. But soon, perhaps like many other mums of twins, I developed a perverse pride in my two-baby bump. I got great pleasure in announcing loudly at the reception desk: Alice Beer to see Professor Nicolaides WITH TWINS. Put that in your designer pipe and smoke it!