Advice For Anxious New Parents: The 5 Biggest Lessons My Twins Taught Me

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I think anyone who has multiples for their first babies is getting baptized by fire. There is nothing that can truly prepare you for becoming a parent. But twins? They're a little extra complicated.

👉 If you or someone you know is expecting twins, be sure to check out this blog post: How to Help New Twin Parents: 9 Things They Actually Need

You can read all the parenting books in the world, but they don't really take into account the twin factor. Most new parent advice assumes you have one baby. One baby to feed. One baby to soothe. One baby whose cues you're trying to learn. Twins don't always afford you that luxury.

You can read every twin blog post you can find or spend hours scrolling through parenting forums and Reddit communities (like I did), but chances are you'll walk away with more questions than answers. One person swears by a strict schedule. Another says schedules are the enemy. One baby slept through the night at eight weeks. Another didn't until age two. Everybody has advice, and somehow all of it contradicts itself.

As a first-time parent, you spend months preparing, planning, researching, and trying to perfect every detail before they arrive. But to be honest? It doesn't really matter.

Because the moment your baby arrives, whether there's one or two, you're no longer parenting theories. You're parenting a person.

Your baby is going to be their own unique individual, even if you have identical twins. They will have their own personality, preferences, temperament, and set of needs. Expecting them to fit neatly into whatever box the internet has created for "the average baby" is both unrealistic for you and unfair to them.

It took me becoming a mom—and then becoming a mom all over again—to finally understand that.

Need to save time? Skip ahead to what you need:

1. What My Twins Taught Me About Letting Go of Perfection

2. Here Are 5 Things I Now Know That I Wish I Knew as an Anxious New Parent

3. Final Thoughts

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What My Twins Taught Me About Letting Go of Perfection

The twins just turned two years old, and if I'm being honest, I still don't have everything figured out. But I am a completely different mother than I was during the first year of their lives. Back then, I was anxious about everything.

Anxious about schedules.

Anxious about feeding.

Anxious about milestones.

Anxious about sleep.

I spent so much time trying to solve babyhood like it was a puzzle. If I could just find the right wake window, the right bottle, the right nap schedule, the right sleep training method, surely everything would click into place. I was constantly searching for the magic fix that would finally make life feel easier. Because it was really, really fricking hard.

Now, with Camden, I know something I didn't know then that has drastically improved my outlook on just about everything.

Babies are going to baby.

That's it. Seriously.

You can do everything "right" and still have a baby who wakes up three times a night. You can meticulously track feeds, wake windows, and ounces and still have a baby who decides today is the day they're refusing bottles and will only nap for 30 minutes.

And on the flip side, you can know absolutely nothing, ignore half the advice on the internet, and somehow end up with a fantastic sleeper.

A lot of it is luck.

A lot of it is temperament.

A lot of it is timing.

And none of it is a reflection of your worth as a parent.

That's probably the biggest lesson the twins taught me.

With Camden, I don't track every ounce, every nap, or every milestone the way I once did. I track nothing, actually. I trust myself more. I trust him more. Instead of immediately turning to Google, TikTok, or Reddit every time something feels off, I pay attention to the baby in front of me first.

Ironically, parenting feels easier this time around—not because Camden is necessarily an easier baby (although admittedly, he is a bit easier), but because I stopped trying to control every variable. I finally accepted that babies are people, not problems to solve.

And now, I'm left wishing I could go back and be the mother I am now for the twins when they were babies. Not because I'm a better mom today. I probably am, at least a little bit. But mostly because I'm a gentler one. A more present one.

I would spend less time staring at tracking apps and Googling my anxieties and more time just staring at them. I would spend less time wondering if I was doing everything right and more time trusting that we were all figuring it out together. I would worry less about creating perfect babies and focus more on enjoying the ones I already had. And I would accept more help.

The first time around, I felt like I had something to prove. I thought good mothers should be able to do it all on their own. I had a hard time asking for help—and an even harder time accepting it when it was offered. Now I know accepting help doesn't make you less capable. It gives you the space to actually enjoy your children.

Let someone hold the baby.

Let someone bring dinner.

Take the nap.

Parenthood was never meant to be done alone. And because I spent an embarrassing amount of time Googling myself into oblivion as a first-time mom, allow me to save you some trouble.

Whether you're parenting one baby or multiples, here are the five things I wish someone had sat me down and told me during those early days.

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Here Are 5 Things I Now Know That I Wish I Knew as an Anxious New Parent:

1. Every baby develops on their own timeline.

Stop comparing them to the internet. If you have twins, stop comparing them to each other. One will do things first. One will take longer.

Honestly, I spent so much of the twins' first year obsessing over milestones. If one twin did something before the other, I worried. If a baby on Instagram seemed ahead, I worried. If an app told me they "should" be doing something by now, I definitely worried.

Most of the things you're worried about today won't even cross your mind a year from now. As a matter of fact, DELETE the Milestone app from your phone entirely if it's making you crazy like it did for me.

2. The internet will convince you everything is a problem.

Babies and toddlers are weird. They have preferences, habits, phases, and personalities from the very beginning. Not every odd behavior means something is wrong.

I vividly remember that Myles started repeatedly hitting his stomach one day as a baby. Naturally, I did what every anxious first-time parent does: I Googled it.

Big mistake.

According to the internet, my options ranged from "totally normal developmental phase" to "your child definitely has a rare neurological disorder."

In reality? He had simply discovered a new gross motor movement and thought it was fun.

Get off TikTok for a little while (where they may convince you it's a problem, like they did to me) and enjoy how cute and silly it is.

Seriously, I spent so much time pathologizing normal baby behavior because the internet told me to. If you're truly concerned about something, call your pediatrician. Not Reddit. Not a Facebook mom group.

And definitely not TikTok.

3. Sleep matters, but perfection doesn't.

Wake windows and schedules are a tool, and they're incredibly helpful, but they're not a law.

Some babies thrive on schedules. Others seem determined to prove every sleep consultant wrong. Use the information, but don't become a prisoner to it. Watching your baby and learning their preferences is more important than anything you will read on the internet. Because the internet loves to give you a "perfect schedule" that will have your baby sleeping 12 hours through the night, and that just may never work for your baby.

In my case, I have discovered that all three of my babies sleep 10 and 1/2 hours at night at the most! Imagine how awful it was waking up at 4:30 AM everyday for months with the twins because I was hellbent on making them sleep 12 hours like the big infant sleep names say they should. (It took me extra long to figure this out, unfortunately.)

Every baby is different, and so are their sleep needs. And your baby is the only one that matters here!

I am not saying to write off all sleep advice, either. Full stop! There are tons of things you can do to set up you and your baby for success, which is really important. But sometimes? You can check every box on a sleep advice checklist and still be woken up multiple times a night. Cause babies gonna baby.

4. Anxiety isn't the same thing as intuition.

This one took me the longest to learn. Sometimes your instincts are absolutely right. Sometimes you're simply scared because you love your children so much. Learning the difference takes time.

I used to think that if I worried hard enough about something, I could somehow prevent it from happening. Like anxiety itself was a form of preparation. It isn't.

Most of the things I lost sleep over never happened. And most of the things that actually did happen? We handled them just fine when they came.

The anxious first-time mom stereotypes can be harsh, but there's a little truth to them. Second- or third-time moms don't worry about half the things first-time moms do. Partially because we are too busy to notice all the things we did the first go around, but also because we know that most of the time, everything works out. You change absolutely nothing about any situation when you worry about it. So just enjoy them while you can. Which leads me to my next word of advice...

5. Enjoy the baby in front of you.

The feeds will change. The naps will change. The setbacks are temporary. The milestone you're worried about today will eventually be replaced by a new one. But the tiny baby you're holding right now won't stay tiny forever.

For better or for worse, being a parent doesn't work that way. We don't get to go backward. Instead, our first children grow alongside us. They teach us. They shape us. They turn us into the parents our future children will get.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

While I can't go back in time and quiet every anxious thought I had as a first-time mom, I hope this post reminds you that you don't have to spend your baby's entire infancy trying to get everything exactly right. You don't have to constantly worry that the other shoe is going to drop.

You can simply love the baby in front of you.

Because the truth is, the twins taught me how to care for a baby... but Camden is teaching me how to finally enjoy one.

I hope you get to enjoy yours, too. :)

Posted from the heart,

Mama Poe

If you or a loved one are experiencing postpartum depression, immediate, free, and confidential support is available 24/7. Call or text the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline at 1-833-TLC-MAMA (1-833-852-6262).

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