Life with Newborn Twins: Routines, Tips, & How To Survive

Bringing home a newborn is a life-changing experience—but bringing home two? That’s an entirely different adventure!

Life with newborn twins is a beautiful, chaotic, and sleep-deprived journey filled with double the love, snuggles, and of course, challenges. From mastering synchronized feedings to surviving sleepless nights, every moment is a lesson in patience and adaptability.

In this post as a twin mom myself, I am sharing my top tips and providing a comprehensive guide for surviving newborn twins. Learn how to find those precious moments to enjoy this short period of time (even though it won’t feel like it) with your twin babies.

Please note, there are affiliate links in this post. Read my privacy & disclosure policy at the bottom of this page to learn more.

Newborn Twins Routine & Schedule Expectations

Unfortunately, a newborn baby’s schedule is not reliable yet. Your days and nights will involve a constant rotation of feedings and naps.

Add two babies to the mix and this is very exhausting! To give you an idea of what to expect, here is a sample newborn baby schedule.

With this challenging schedule what can you do to manage your schedule with newborn twins and not go crazy? Below you will find tips for getting sleep with newborn twins and strategies for feeding newborn twins. Implementing the ideas below will help streamline those processes.

Any little things you can do to make getting your newborn twins to sleep or feeds go faster will add up throughout your day to save you time. Finally, check out how to get twins on the same schedule from day 1. This will be another time saver for you.

Related: Check out this daily Newborn Twin Tracker and these printable Twin Schedules (with tips for getting your twins on the same schedule) for more twin scheduling help.

How To Manage Sleep in your Life with Newborn Twins

Sleep with two newborn babies can seem elusive. But, there are a bunch of different ways you can manage sleep (especially at night) in your life with newborn twins. Click the link below to learn four different ways to handle sleep at night.

How To Get Sleep at Night with Newborn Twins

What To Expect for Feeding Newborn Twins

One of the trickiest parts of feeding a newborn is the large amount of time a feeding takes. The time between feeds (see the sample newborn schedule above) starts when a feeding begins, not when it ends.

A newborn feeding typically takes 30-45 minutes and can even last 1 hour! That’s a lot of work for both baby and the parents.

Additionally, it’s very important to learn how to get a good latch (if breastfeeding) or ensure your baby’s mouth is appropriately positioned on the nipple of their bottle. And if you are breastfeeding or pumping, establishing a large enough breast milk supply for twins is a huge undertaking.

As you can see, with twins, feeding two newborns can be quite challenging. But, I do have a bunch of things to help you understand how to manage feeding your babies. Click the articles on newborn twin feeding below that apply to you, whether you are breastfeeding, formula feeding, or pumping.

• Breastfeeding Newborn Twins 101
• Ultimate Formula Feeding Twins Guide
• How To Exclusively Pump for Twins

Twin Mom Tips for Taking Care of Newborn Twins

Now that we have the reviewed the basics of newborn twin schedules, feedings, and sleeping, there are a few other items that you will want to be aware of. Let’s review some miscellaneous tips you can use to make your life with newborn twins go a little bit more smoothly.

1 – Make Sure You Have All the Newborn Twin Must Haves (It’s Not As Much As You Think You Need)

What do you actually need for newborn twins? Here is a list of newborn twin essential items I recommend you get. There are only 17 items on the list!

2 – Learn to Tandem Feed

With newborn twins, sometimes they will eat at the same time and sometimes they won’t. Hopefully, you are working towards getting them to feed simultaneously more often than not.

Learn how to feed your twins at the same time (tandem feed) right here. There are instructions for both breastfeeding and bottle feeding.

Related: I highly recommend a Twin-Z Pillow to assist with tandem feeding newborn twins!

3 – Learn How To Carry Them at the Same Time

It will be helpful to figure out the strategies you prefer for carrying two babies at the same time. Personally, I would either use two infant car seats to carry them in my arms.

I never really got the hang of using a baby carrier, but some parents can’t live without them. You can even get a double baby carrier for twins. Check out this article on carrying and holding twins at the same time to learn all the options you can try.

4 – Be Efficient at Diaper Changes

This will probably happen naturally because you will be changing so many diapers! Make sure you have a good setup for your diaper changing area with everything you need on it. If you have two floors in your home, I recommend having a changing area on each floor.

Check out this video on how to change a diaper, this is for anyone that really doesn’t know how to do it yet. And you can get tips for quick diaper changes here.

5 – Use the 5 S’s

My final newborn twin hack, isn’t necessarily specific for twins, but if you learn how to use the 5 S’s, it will go a long way in helping both your babies get good naps and sleep at night.

I recommend watching this video about how to implement the 5 S’s. We actually received this as a present, and I found it so helpful.

The two biggest lessons I learned from the 5 S’s were to swaddle very, very tightly (even if you think your baby doesn’t like swaddling) and to use a shushing noise to help your baby fall asleep.

I like the 5 S’s because you are given useful tools that you can use every time you are putting your babies down to sleep. It’s nice to have a plan that you can stick to, instead of feeling like you don’t know what to do or what to try to get your newborns to fall asleep.

When Does Life with Twins Get Easier?

Caring for newborn twins is hard work! Personally, once the newborn stage ended I did think my life got easier. Around 3 months old your babies schedules will get a little bit more reliable.

Then, by 6 months old, when your babies are taking 3 naps per day, their schedule will be even more dependable and they will probably be sleeping through the night. You can at least start sleep training your twins at this age if you choose to. You can learn more about my thoughts on when twins get easier here.

Hopefully you have a better understanding of what to expect and how to handle life with newborn twins now.

That wraps up my thoughts on what you can expect each day with newborn twins. Yes, you will be exhausted! But, by using the strategies above there are things you can do to make this short period of time a little bit smoother. Good luck!