How Do You Pick a Pediatrician for your Twins?

Our question today comes from AJ. He asks, “How do you pick a pediatrician for your twins?” Of course, as parents of twins, you want to have a good doctor for your twins. The pediatrician is going to be there from the very beginning of life for your twins. The pediatrician will help with all those well-baby checkups they have – frequently, when they’re very young, and then spaced out over time as your kids start to grow.

Our first pediatrician came as a recommendation from my wife’s doctor. When we were expecting our first son, who came before the twins, we really had no idea where to find a pediatrician. So I asked my wife’s obstetrician and that doctor made a recommendation. That’s what we went with.

So we went to that pediatrician and it worked for a little bit. However, eventually, we’ve decided it wasn’t a good fit for our family and we decided to change doctors. We went with a pediatrician who some of our friends had recommended.

Take a Recommendation

So if you are running short of recommendations, maybe you don’t have friends who have a pediatrician they like, you can always look online for recommendations. Sites like yelp.com have reviews for more than just restaurants or things around town, they offer reviews of medical facilities and doctors as well. Also check with your local parents of multiples group for recommendations.

Keep in mind that many pediatricians have open-house style meetings where you can go and meet with the doctor and the office staff and the nurses to see if it’s a good fit for you and your family.

So you can go, you can take your kids, you can see if you like the location, the office, and the personality of the staff before you decide to pick them as your pediatrician for your kids.

A Pediatrician Who Knows Twins

When you’re looking for pediatrician, also try to look for one who’s experienced with twins or multiples. If a pediatrician has been in practice for any amount of time, she should have already had exposure to twins and multiples as a matter of course.

But you want to ask specifically about that because you are having twins, and it is important to you. So if the pediatrician dismisses twins as if they’re just two singletons, you might want to look elsewhere. You want a doctor to acknowledge the fact that twins are unique. Make sure that they meet your other needs as well at that doctor’s office.

You want to have a doctor’s office that will let you have simultaneous appointments for your twins, not necessarily back to back. Because when you take your twins to the doctor, you want to be able to do it in one go, particularly with your well-baby checkups it’s best to take care of both at the same time.

So with our pediatrician, we could take both of our girls to their pediatrician at the same time. We wait in the same exam room. The nurse would come in, the nurse would do the check up on each of the girls. And then, the doctor would come in and take care each of the girls all in one sitting so we didn’t have to go back to the doctor later or even have two separate appointments, which can be a big hassle.

Board Certification

I invite you to also look for a board-certified pediatrician. That’s a certification that doctors can have here in the United States at least. And board-certified physicians are doctors who go through an extra amount of training and certification in their specialty.

So that’s an extra level of knowledge and experience that they have to make them even better at the field medicine that they’re practicing. Doctors can be board certified in lots of different specialties so you want to look for a board-certified pediatrician who will meet your needs.

Of course, you also want to make sure that you check your insurance to see if the pediatrician who you like to take your kids to is actually on your insurance plan and in your network so that your out-of-pocket expenses will be reduced.

This question was originally addressed on the Dad’s Guide to Twins Podcast Episode 47: Stimulating Twins During Pregnancy, Stopping Whining, Finding a Pediatrician.

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