Elimination Communication with Twins

EPISODE 249: Elimination Communication with Twins

Nicole Cheever:
Double the trouble, or double the fun? What do you do with two or more babies who need to pee at the same time when you only have two hands? We've got a listener-submitted question this week asking how to juggle twins and EC, plus some expert advice from one of our certified coaches who is a twin mama herself. Even if your babies are all singletons, this episode is chock-full of great tips, so stick around. This is episode 249, Elimination Communication with Twins.

Hello and welcome to the Go Diaper Free podcast. I'm your host, Nicole Cheever, Go diaper free certified coach and mama to three kiddos who all went through EC and potty training at different ages and stages.

Hey there, welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for joining me today. I'm Nicole Cheever with Go Diaper Free and this is episode 249, Elimination Communication with Twins. Please make sure you head on over to godiaperfree.com/249 when you're done listening and check out the show notes. I'll have the transcript over there, links to everything I mentioned, you can ask us questions, and leave us comments. If you're listening on your favorite podcast player, please make sure to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're on YouTube, make sure you hit that subscribe button as well. Today we've got a listener-submitted question about how to start elimination communication with twins. Now, even though most of the advice today is going to be geared towards families with twins and multiples, there is a lot here that's relevant for singletons. So if you're not a twin mommy or daddy, please make sure you stick around. I think you're really going to find some benefits from this episode.

A while back, Andrea recorded episode 82, which was tips she'd learned from the community about doing EC with twins. Today we're going to talk a little bit more specifically about how to start EC with twins that are newborns or infants, a little bit younger. Not that you have to start them then, of course. It's never a bad time to start EC, but this question specifically, you'll hear in a second, was about starting with little, tiny babies.

Most of the advice I've got today for you is from one of our other certified coaches, Erica Grant out of Glasgow, Montana. She's a software engineer and mama of identical twin girls who have a singleton little brother. So thanks to Erica for helping me out with this today. Let's go ahead and take a listen to the question.

Sasha:
Hi, my name is Sasha, I am in Fairbanks, Alaska and I have 12 week old twin baby girls. I was wondering if you have any tips for twins. A lot of times it's difficult to potty everyone when they need because I'm with the other baby. So I was just wondering if you had any tips or tricks that relates specifically to ECing twins. Thanks.

Nicole:
Thanks so much, Sasha. Not going to lie, those cute little baby gurgles are giving me some baby fever right now. That's just too precious. The first thing that Erica suggested when I brought this up to her was doing what she calls a half day split. And this is her recommendation if you're starting with twins anytime before about a year old. What this means is starting with baby A in the morning and having that half of the day be elimination communication with baby A, and then switching gears to doing pottytunities with baby B in the afternoon. And that can go either way, whichever you think is better, whichever twin you think would do better in the morning or the afternoon, but it would be good to keep it consistent.

She says that this is going to take care of two big mental hurdles that she experienced with doing EC with twins and that she's found that a lot of other twin parents face. The first one is that you have to force yourself to not be perfect. And this of course is great advice for everybody. But especially with twins, when you have more babies than sometimes you have hands available, switching that mindset to not focusing on catching 100% or anywhere near that, especially with twins, is super important. What it does is it builds in a consistent “let it go” time for you, so that when you're working with one baby and just focusing on one baby, you've given yourself permission to let it go, to not worry about the other baby's potty needs, at least for that part of the day. It gives you a little bit of that mental break, helps encourage you that it's going to be okay, even if you're letting some pees or possibly poops go. But with babies that young, she definitely recommends the half day split.

The other benefit of the half day split that Erica wanted to highlight is that the babies will start to become regular when they have a regular schedule. So if you're catching morning pees with baby A, baby B knows that their pottytunities are going to come in the afternoon. For example, when they wake up from an afternoon nap, that's when they can start, and you'll take advantage of that. Just like singleton parents, your babies are going to catch on to the routine pretty quickly. We are creatures of habit, humans understand patterns very well, so that is going to be working in your favor when you're doing a half day split.

She has a couple other recommendations that she says are a lot like potty training. So if you've got twins and they're not newborns, pay attention to this portion, it's going to be very similar if you're going to be doing potty training with them. You want to have several potties around the house.
Even as a singleton mama, I believe that you can never have too many potties, especially when you're in the process of wrapping up, potty training, ditching diapers, it's good to have them everywhere. You will be able to dial back and reduce the number of potties, but to start out with, you can't have too many potties.

Another suggestion she has, because it can be really difficult to potty twins in public… episode 248 was Tips for Pottying in Public, and when I released that, I only did it from the singleton perspective. Of course you're going to be doing even more fumbling and juggling if you've got two babies, so it's much easier to do a car potty before you go in anywhere or after you come out. So she suggests making sure you have one, maybe two potties in the car, so that way you can take care of it there rather than having to deal with it in a public restroom. She also suggested pottying one baby while the other one is still in the car seat, that way you have the second baby still contained. The baby containers are definitely helpful when you've got multiples, right? So you can take one baby out, put them on the potty, especially if you're going grocery shopping or something, you can then maybe put them in the cart. And the other baby, baby B, is still in the car seat, and then they'll have their turn afterward.

She said with twins, most of it is just really being consistent, going with the flow, and remembering that you're going to hit sleep regressions, potty pauses, just like singleton babies. Sometimes one baby will be rocking it and the other baby won't be quite getting it, so try not to get discouraged when that happens. When she told me this, I asked her specifically, what would you do in that case? If you've got one baby who it's really clicking for and the other one is struggling, do you want to focus on the baby who is doing well and just stick with that, or how would you handle it? And she recommended to me that you stay consistent with both babies, no matter what. Because, especially with potty training for her, she dealt with some jealousy. If you go back to that episode I mentioned, episode 82, there's a recommendation for a stagger start when you're doing potty training. Well, Erica's experience was different, and obviously all kids have different temperaments and different personalities, so it's important to just tune in to what you think in your mama heart, or your daddy heart, will work best for your babies.

Erica dealt with some jealousy. She had one baby who was doing great with wrapping up and she thought, "Oh great, I can get her out of diapers and have her all finished up really quick, and then move on to focusing with the baby that was struggling a little bit." Well, what her baby who was struggling really needed to know was she was confident in her and believed that she could still do it. So they needed to go together, she needed that consistency.

Just like with singletons, consistency is really key. Moving forward, sticking to those easy catches and those little wins, so that you can keep moving forward even when it feels like it's starting to fall apart. So because of that experience, Erica always recommends that you start twins at the same time, and that they can actually help build each other up and grow together while they're going through the process together. They have that built-in potty buddy, just like they have that built-in friend for life.

Back quickly to the sleep regressions. Erica highly recommends for any parent, including singleton parents, to get a physical copy of the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Twins. She said it's half the length of the singleton version because it's just the bare bones what you need, it's organized by age. So that way if you think you're in a sleep regression, you can find the age in the book and see real life examples of people with twins of different temperaments and how they tried different approaches and what might work for your family. She said it's like a cheat sheet for sleep regressions, especially with twins, but also for singletons. So I will put a link to that book in the show notes as well.

For potty pauses, and sleep regressions, or just regressions in general, she says the best way to go through them and still keep your sanity and not get burned out with EC, is to recognize the moment that you are in and shift to the bare minimum approach. We always recommend this, regardless of how many babies you have, you can dial back to just the easy catches. And of course, not all the easy catches, if the easy catches are burning you out or they're not easy for you, then they're not easy. So just the easy catches that are going to work, just doing one or two diaper change pottytunities a day. In her experience, it's harder to pick the ball back up and get it rolling again with EC if you let it completely go. And I would agree with that. As a parent who did EC with my first and then completely let it go, when you're not staying consistent and you're not still working at least one or two little pottytunities into your daily routine, it's so much harder down the line to really get the courage, and get the enthusiasm, to pick it back up. So if you at least just keep a handful of pottytunities with each baby, even when it feels like everything's falling apart, and even if you don't actually get anything in the potty, as long as you're keeping that part of your routine, it will keep you going, help you not get burned out, and maintain that level of contact and level of awareness with EC while you get through whatever that pause or regression is.

And again, if one baby is really rocking it, you can do more catches with that baby. And if the other baby is struggling, you still want to keep that schedule with the other baby to let them know that you are confident in them, you do believe that they can get it back together. Because you never know when it's going to start clicking again. If we as parents get in our heads and we decide that this just isn't working out for our babies, well that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. It will already be a foregone conclusion, and our baby will continue to struggle, partially because they've seen that we don't have confidence in them, or we just don't find it important anymore, so why should they? If we keep that consistency with our children and show them that we believe in them and that we're confident in them, they will succeed, they will pick it back up. And because we don't ever know when that's going to happen, it's better to just stay consistent, so that as soon as it does start to click again, you can get the ball rolling and you can pick it back up together.

That's it for today's episode. Sasha, I hope you found that helpful. And everyone else listening, I hope you got some good advice, whether you're twin, triplet, quad parents, or singleton parents. Please head over again to the blog, godiaperfree.com/249 and let us know, do you have tips for practicing EC with twins or triplets or quads, any number of multiples? Please share your tips and your experiences on the blog.

Thanks again so much for joining me today. I'm Nicole Cheever with Go Diaper Free. Please follow us on your podcast player, YouTube and all of our socials, and we will see you next week.

You want to catch your first pee today? Grab Andrea's free easy start guide and do just that. It's only one page and it will change your world. Get it at godiaperfree.com/start. We'll see you next time.