If you are a mom or a mom-to-be of multiples, you may wonder how you can feed more than one baby at the same time. Welcome to baby-led weaning (BLW) mama – it’s going to save your sanity! In this blog, I provide twin tips from my experience as an infant feeding and swallowing specialist. The founder of ezpz, Lindsey Laurain, will chime in too. She’s a twin mom!
Bowls: I recommend using three bowls at mealtime (two for the kids and one for you). The third bowl serves a couple of purposes. First, it’s a quick way to refill your twin's bowls and mitigate hunger tantrums. And second, it’s important for you to eat some of the same foods you are offering your kids. Why? Research shows that young children are more likely to accept new foods when others in the home are eating that food as well. So, have a few nibbles to encourage your children to try a few bites!
- Expert Tip: The ezpz Tiny Bowl is perfect for baby’s first foods. The Tiny Bowl fits on all highchair trays, including space saver models! The larger 8oz Mini Bowl is great for older babies and toddlers who are eating more at mealtime.
- Founder Tip: I love the suction feature of our mats, as it reduces tipped bowls and makes cleanup easier. Also, if mama only has one hand available to feed, the bowl won’t slide around.
Colors: When selecting mealtime gear for twins or multiples it’s important to designate a color for each child. Try to color code each child's utensils, open cups, straw cups, bowls, plates and bibs. Assigning a color is a simple way for you to set-up mealtime. Plus, colors help you to see what each child ate and whether or not they tried a new food.
- Expert Tip: Luckily for moms of multiples, ezpz organizes our feeding gear by color. So, your child can have the same color at mealtime from babyhood to toddlerhood to Pre-K. Score!
- Founder Tip: We definitely used, and continue to use, colors to keep our family organized. To this day, Drew uses blue (see how that rhymes?) and Chase uses green.
Cups: Using color coded cups is important as you transition your twins off bottles. With colors, you can keep track of how many ounces of breastmilk or formula each child is drinking from either an open cup or a straw cup.
- Expert Tip: Introduce the Tiny Cup to your babies at six months of age. To start, you will need to hold the cup for your little ones and let each one take sips of breastmilk or formula. Eventually, your twins will start to hold the cup independently and, perhaps, they can rock a ‘cheers’ prior to taking a sip! Around nine months of age you can introduce the ezpz Mini Cup + Straw Training System and encourage them to take sips from the training side of the straw. Once they have mastered this setting, flip the straw around for more advanced straw drinking.
- Founder Tip: Ahh! I wish I knew about the importance of open cup drinking when the twins were younger. Our twins had a lot of feeding challenges and ezpz’s open cups would have helped!
Permanent Marker: At times, other caregivers will feed your twins. Whether they go to daycare or grandma’s house, you may need to take extra steps in order to organize your mealtime gear. I highly recommend writing each child’s name (or initials) on their cups, bowls, plates, etc. so items don’t get lost. This will also help ward off any tantrums that may occur from a child getting the wrong colored plate at mealtime.
- Expert Tip: For additional organization of food (or leftovers from a restaurant), we have lids for the Tiny Bowl, Mini Bowl and Mini Mat. These mats also come in their own wet bag for quick storage when on-the-go.
- Founder Tip: Don’t worry; the permanent marker won’t come off ezpz products when they are washed. Also, did you know that all of ezpz’s products are dishwasher safe? This is a major time saver for busy parents!
The coordination of feeding two or more same-age children is one of the biggest challenges for parents of multiples. We hope that ezpz products make that process less stressful… and more fun! Please tag us in your mealtime pics with the hashtags #ezpzfun #myezpzmat.
