Twinning: ‘Mommy And Me’ Classes Are A Bust

mommy and me classes

Having twins can be the most amazing experience of your life. It can also cause you to wake up in the morning wishing you were someone else. Twinning offers an honest depiction of life with twins from a mom who tries to keep things somewhere in the middle.

Once you become a mom, a lot of people will tell you it’s important to get out of the house and meet other moms. Taking a class with your baby will accomplish both. It’s good advice, but it’s a bit harder to follow if you’re a mom with infant twins.

First of all, don’t be disappointed if you’re not allowed to sign up. Sad as it sounds, many classes such as baby gym classes (like Gymboree) and swimming lessons have a one adult to one baby requirement. This works out for the stay-at-home-mom with a live-in nanny, women with partners who can take time off, or women with agreeable relatives living nearby. But it’s not such a great deal for the rest of us.

One of my friends hired a babysitter to come to baby-gym classes with her, but personally if I’m paying for a babysitter, I’m going shopping or out to dinner.

While I completely understand that 1:1 is obviously mandatory for swimming lessons, I do think twin moms should at least be allowed to try out other classes in non-life threatening situations like baby gyms or music rooms.

Many of my twin-mom friends who experienced the 1:1 ratio shut-out were pretty pissed off about it. They thought it was unfair and felt sorry for their twins because they weren’t getting the same experiences a single baby would. As mothers of twins, we spend our days and nights taking care of two babies, so to have a baby gym tell us ”No, you can’t provide adequate care for your two children” is an insult.

While it’s frustrating to spend time looking into a program only to find out the door is shut in your face, I wasn’t sad for too long. I usually take The Path of Least Exertion in all situations, so I wasn’t too upset that I didn’t have to schlep two infants around a germ-filled, padded room, or that I didn’t have to wear a bathing suit in front of other adults only months after giving birth. I had a fleeting moment of disappointment, and then I moved on.

I did want to try a class with my twins though, so I decided to bring them to Story Time at our local library. It’s a free program, so I figured if it didn’t work out, I just wouldn’t go again.

And it didn’t work out. At all.

For the first class, my mother was visiting and agreed to come with us to ”help out.” She had my daughter and I had my son, and the class turned out to be very active with a lot of getting up and kneeling down. My mom hadn’t anticipated this and after standing with the class once, she refused to get up again, mouthing to me that her ”knees hurt.” I felt so sad for my little girl, who was much more into the class than my son, trying to escape from my mom’s clutches so she could join in the fun. I didn’t think it would be much better by myself, so I never went again.

The second class I signed us up for was a music class in town. It was on the expensive side, but I figured it would be worth it to be around other mothers and get the kids out into new and interesting territory. A bonus was that I could walk to it, so we didn’t have to go through all the hassle of a car trip””I’d just pop my twins into the stroller and we were off.

The walkability was probably the best thing about that class. The teacher would sing some annoying songs, pass out ”instruments” (like maracas) for the babies to play with, and all the kids would stick them in their mouth or fling them. Then the moms would have to walk around in circles with their baby and dance them around. I had one baby on each hip and would be sweating by the end of class””it was ridiculous that I actually paid money to be put through that.

I was always exhausted by the time we got home and since the babies would nap in the stroller on the walk home, they were super energetic once we were back. I didn’t make any mom friends at the music class either, because I was the only one with two babies””the freak show of the class.

I got a lot of ”I don’t know how you do it!” and if someone said anything more to me, we were usually interrupted by a baby. If you have toddler twins, you know that conversations are more like unfinished soundbites””a mom would say something to me, and I’d see one of my twins heading for the front door or eating cobwebs in the corner, and that conversation was over.

So if I could tell new twin moms the truth about how all these infant classes are so important for our children’s general well being and future successes, I’d call bullshit. The classes are mainly for the moms””to get out of the house, to lean on one another, to learn from moms who have done it before. When it comes to baby socialization””remember that your kids are the only ones in that class who have playdates all day long with another child their age. Every day they learn about interacting from each other. That’s one of the awesome things about having twins””and it doesn’t hurt that it comes for free.

(photo: zulufoto / Shutterstock)

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