Bathing Two Babies

Bathing two Babies

By Kristy Zurbrick

When twins come along, two arms and two hands suddenly aren't enough. The appendages that have served you so well to this point now need reinforcements. When you can't call in extra troops, you must rely on extra tools.

Take bathing your babies, for instance. How do you keep the one occupied while you suds up the other? It can be tricky, but it can be done. Try arming yourself with the following ideas to achieve this particular task.

Debbie, the mother of 8-year-old twins, remembers vividly the first time she had to bathe her boys alone.

"My husband, a high school football coach, left for practice. I was going about my business, then I realized I had to give Kevin and Kenton a bath on my own. I panicked, I cried, the whole ball of wax," she says.

Then, a flash of ingenuity saved the day. She strapped one of the boys into a hammock chair, the precursor to the popular bouncy seat, and put the other in the sink. Once one was clean, toweled off and dressed, the babies switched places. Rinse, lather, repeat.

"That worked well. The one in the chair was happy because he could still see you, and it freed up your hands to take care of the other one," she explains.

When your children graduate to the big-people tub, neither has to sit as a spectator at tub-side. Special bath chairs equipped with suction cups and body supports allow you to wash both kids at the same time.

"I bought two of them," says Jennie, the mother of 3-year-old twins. "The chairs stick to the bottom of the tub and are designed to keep the children contained. There’s no way they'll slip into the water."

At some point, your twins will become a "clean-baby team." They'll get a kick out of pouring water on one another and soaping each other up. That's when your original problem - too many babies, too few hands - disappears.

"Now that my boys are three, they help wash each other. While they're playing with their boats and those sea animals that squirt, they manage to get each other clean," Jenny says.