By LaRee Brown Figure 1. Ashlyn in the pouch and Lexie in the "colic hold" on LaRee's arm.
While I'm far from an "expert" on babywearing or multiples, I wanted to share what I have found useful in the 5½ months since my twin daughters were born. I have found slings to be an absolute necessity! And, I have come to the conclusion that parents of multiples use slings differently than parents of singletons. I use slings to carry two babies at once. I don't often just put the babies in a sling so I can do housework; I find it awkward to sling both babies at once and I usually need to be entertaining both of them. Housework just doesn't get done until my husband is home or my mom comes over.
Figure 2. One in the ring sling (underneath) and one in the pouch.
When they were tiny, I never found much use for double slinging. I found it much easier to have one in a sling and carry the other one. Now that they're getting heavier, and have the head control to use the hip carry, I'm more likely to use double hip carry (using 2 slings) if I need to carry both of them for any period of time. I've found that at this point I can't get a "hands free" hip carry with the pouch, but I can with a ring sling. What I usually end up doing is putting the first baby in a ring sling and then (because by then, chances are one or both of them is fussing . . . or hollering) I use a pouch for the second baby (see Figure 2). When she's in the pouch I just know that I have to hold on to her (but don't have to bear her weight on my arm like I would without the pouch). I have even managed to nurse both of them at the same time in the hip carries and I don't think anyone really realized what I was doing (a nursing shirt of some sort is a necessity for this though). What I do is wear a man's tank top (the ones with the really big arm holes) under a regular t-shirt, this gives the same effect as the "extended armhole" nursing shirts but only costs a couple dollars.
