Raising Your Twins by Stephanie Woo

Author:Stephanie Woo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

Daddy helping Brooke (eight weeks old here) float in the water while supporting her neck. She is calm and relaxed. This is a great baby tub because it is wide and deep enough to give the baby plenty of space to move.

Bathing With Your “Water Babies”

One night, when my girls were four weeks old, I filled our adult bathtub and got in with Mackenzie, holding her in the water in front of me. I let her legs float up while I supported her neck. My husband, Mark, was there too, outside the tub. We both watched her very closely.

It was obvious that she loved it. She was quiet and calm as she floated gently in the water. When we splashed the water a little and some of it got on her face, she squirmed but did not cry. She just blinked the water out of her eyes; then she opened them and looked up at us! We did it again, this time letting some water flow down her face intentionally (to see whether the first time was a fluke), and again, she didn’t cry!

We were amazed by the whole experience. We took her out of the tub and dried her. I dried her ears carefully with the towel and then a cotton swab since a lot of water got in while she was floating. We then did the same thing with Brooke. Like my mom predicted, after their baths, both babies drank their milk voraciously and fell asleep for a good long time.

I realized that being in the tub with them makes it much easier to hold and clean babies, rather than trying to wash and support them in little baby tubs. It is also a special opportunity to bond with your babies and give them some much-needed skin-to-skin contact. Now I look back on those times fondly. Every day after my shower, I would bathe the girls one at a time for about fifteen minutes each. Mark laughed at me because I was spending so much time in the bath each day, but for me, it was wonderfully rejuvenating. I continued bathing with each of my babies till they were six months old and could sit up by themselves (and kick and play) in the tub.

The first time we took Brooke and Mackenzie to swim class at nine months old, the teacher labeled them as “water babies” because they were so fearless in the water. He threw them in the pool by themselves (head and everything), and they just followed the current of the water into our waiting arms. When we lifted them up, they blinked the water out of their eyes and looked back at us. They were fine! One thing is for sure: they have always felt completely at ease and at home in the water.

Toilet Training

Disposable diapers may be the greatest convenience ever invented for parents, but they have significantly pushed back independent toileting for our children. In most of the world, where disposable diapers are not readily available, children are toilet trained shortly after they start walking.

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