From the Nursing Chair: Tandem Crying

This post is part of From the Nursing Chair, a series on the joys and challenges of breastfeeding twins.

Squish and Squeak at 6 weeks. It's blurry because I could never stop moving!

When the virtues of tandem nursing are extolled, you rarely hear about its worst side effect: tandem crying. When two babies are accustomed to eating at the same time, they become hungry at the same time, thus start crying at the same time. Occasionally they even poop at the same time, necessitating a tandem diaper change...you get the idea.

Somehow, this doesn't carry over to sleeping at the same time, at least not at first. Go figure.

The key, I've discovered, is to get a jump on when they are likely to start crying and give them what they want before they start to panic. By 10 weeks old, we the boys started to get on an eat-wake-sleep rhythm, I could predict with greater certainty what need is next in the queue and act before all hell breaks loose.

Most of the time.