Overcoming a Tough Medical Diagnosis During the Twin Pregnancy with Aaron Rieder – Podcast 261

Podcast: Download

Episode 261 of the Dad’s Guide to Twins Podcast Show Notes

Today we continue our father of twins interview series with Aaron Rieder, father of twin girls. Listen as we explore his twin parenting journey, including:

• Being married for 20 years before having twins via IVF
• Wife’s pregnancy started healthy and normal but then the twins were growing at different rates
• Having twins while living in remote area
• Dealing with intrauterine growth restriction when the twins were not getting consistent flow of nutrients
• What if one twin stops growing, they could initiate delivery but put both twins at risk
• Decision to name twins during pregnancy
• Twins in NICU (one for 2 weeks, the other for 34 days)
• Challenge of getting twins in a routine
• Seeing the twin bond between them

Podcast Transcript

This is auto-generated so please forgive any mistakes.

Joe Rawlinson 0:00
What do you do if during the twin pregnancy the doctors tell you that one of your twins might not make it all the way? Today on the podcast to talk with one twin dad, who had exactly that happened to him and his wife during their pregnancy, and how the good news is they made it through with healthy twin girls.

Intro 0:18
Welcome to the dads guided twins Podcast, the podcast that will help you survive and thrive as a father of twins Now, here’s your host, the author of the book, the dads guide to twins Joe Rawlinson.

Joe Rawlinson 0:32
Hey everybody. Welcome to the 261st episode of the Dad’s Guide to Twins podcast. This is Joe Rawlinson. As always, you can find me on the web at dadsguidetotwins.com. Today we are continuing our father of twins interview series with the father of twin girls. But before we jump into his story, I want to let you know that you can get a free audiobook version of my first book Dad’s Guide to Twins by visiting freetwinbook.com. Once again, it’s freetwinbook.com. Today, we’d like to welcome to the show, father of twins, Aaron Rieder. Welcome to the show, Aaron.

Aaron Rieder 1:04
Thank you for having me.

Joe Rawlinson 1:05
Aaron, how old are your twins right now. And what’s something exciting about this age?

Aaron Rieder 1:10
My twins are four. They’re both in full day preschool. And it’s exciting because this is kind of around the time where they really start to form that twin bond that we talked so much about. And they have so many shared experiences. And I think that’s kind of where the twin bond comes from. They just, they’re in school together, they’re at home together. And they do that they do more with each other than they do with any other person on the planet. So they spend a lot of time together. And it’s exciting to see that relationship. Especially over the last year, there’s been a couple of health issues with one of my children. And so there’s been days where they haven’t gone to preschool together and just to see how excited they are to see each other when they get home. And, you know, they draw pictures for each other because they miss each other and some fun stuff like that.

Joe Rawlinson 1:58
That’s great to see that bond to that love between them. Are they in the same bedroom together?

Aaron Rieder 2:04
They are. Yep.

Joe Rawlinson 2:05
How would you classify them as roommates with a cooperative? Are they kind of opposite personalities? How’s that work?

Aaron Rieder 2:12
You know, they they definitely have have their moments where they don’t get along very well. As far as the nighttime routine stuff goes, they seem to do fairly well. At least sleeping in the room together, playing in the room together sometimes a little more challenging.

Joe Rawlinson 2:26
Now you have twin girls, are they identical or fraternal?

Aaron Rieder 2:31
No. And they are fraternal. And my wife and I joke that we have the absolute most fraternal twin girls in the world. One is blond hair, blue eyes. And she is about six inches and about maybe 10 to 15 pounds smaller than her brown hair brown eyed twin. So they’re they’re very, very different. body style is different. The smaller one looks a little more like me, and the bigger one looks a little bit more like my wife.

Joe Rawlinson 2:59
That’s cool, so you have your own little you’re a little twin that looks like Mom, mom looks like dad. That’s nice. Let’s rewind back to when you found out that you would be having twins. What was your family situation like at that time?

Aaron Rieder 3:11
We, my wife and I’ve been married for over 20 years in June. And we had always wanted children and finally got to a place in our careers when we felt that it was the right time. And unfortunately, we had a lot of trouble being able to get pregnant. And we eventually after doing IUI and IVF, we went to IVF. And our first pregnancy was our son was just turned seven. And then we had an unsuccessful embryo transfer. And then a few months later, we had a successful transfer of my girls. So we literally found out we were pregnant with twins within weeks of having IVF done. Because when the HCG numbers came back for my son, it was like 30 and then it more than doubled to about 80. And with my girls, their first test was a 430 and then it doubled over 900. So we were just hoping that it was only two when we went into the doctor’s office and sure enough, we went down to the embryologist again, and he confirmed that, indeed that there were two embryos there so that that had taken hold.

Joe Rawlinson 4:26
And typically when you’re doing IVF you’re going to find out much earlier than then like since in our case where we was just kind of random and we had identical twins we found out much later in the pregnancy because you have so much monitoring and attention early on. How did the pregnancy progress for mom and the girls?

Aaron Rieder 4:43
So it started off a very, very good pregnancy because my wife has polycystic ovarian syndrome. She actually when she when she is pregnant, she actually is almost a little healthier and she actually loses some weight and kind Have thins out a little bit, beginning of the pregnancy was very healthy, everything looked good. And then I would say right around shortly after the anatomy scan her, her primary OB, which is also a personal friend of ours, kind of sat us down and said, Look, you know, we have a, we have a mild concern here, your twins appear to be growing at different rates. And we want to send you down to a specialist to see if we can figure out what’s going on. And my guess is she probably knew, but didn’t want to be the person to tell us that there was going to be an issue. And I can’t really blame her for that plus, I mean, it wasn’t her. It wasn’t really her area of expertise. So one of the one of the struggles with where we live, we live in a magnificent part of the planet, it’s Northern Michigan is absolutely gorgeous. Up here, we we live in a place where people take vacations. The problem is because it’s so rural, our hospital does not have a NICU, we don’t have any internal fetal medicine specialists. And so if you get referred to a specialist, especially for pediatrics, you’re going to end up going down state, usually to Grand Rapids or Ann Arbor. And we were fortunate that this particular doctor came up, it was a practice of three doctors came up every other weekend to Traverse City. And it just so happened that it was my wife’s birthday. So we thought, okay, we’ll go to, you know, we’ll go to Traverse City, we’ll see the internal fetal medicine specialist, and then we’ll go out for lunch and celebrate my wife’s birthday. And that day did not turn out the way that we had planned. So we did the ultrasound, and I knew it was kind of serious, when the ultrasound tech asked for the doctor to come in, that’s usually a good indication that they are they’re seeing something and they they wanted, they wanted, you know, a more educated set of eyes looking at it. And the whole exam was was really quiet, which is very different than most of the ultrasounds that I’ve been at. Because, you know, you’re there’s a lot of talk about what the babies are doing and how they look and things like that. And this was this was just quiet, you know, deathly quiet. And so the that dealt with the ultrasound, and they had to go wait in the waiting room, and then they called us back to meet with the doctor. And, again, I kind of felt like, there was definitely I was a little worried about what’s going to happen. So we sat down, and the doctor explained to us that one of my girls, the smallest one, had a condition called inter uterine growth restriction. And it was caused by she wasn’t getting a consistent flow of nutrients over the over there, the umbilical cord. And if that condition persisted, the doctor made us aware that there’s a possibility that this could be fatal for one of our twins. And that we had to prepare ourselves for that possibility. And it’s, it was honestly extremely devastating. I mean, to to know, that we we put so much into having these girls, and you know, this was a definitely a planned pregnancy, we wanted it, we were excited about having twins. And the idea that one of them could pass away, before we ever got to meet them is difficult. And we had lost a pregnancy before. But it was so early on that it just, you know, we just kind of moved on and didn’t really think much about it. And by the time you know, we went right back and did another round of IVF. So we really didn’t, it really didn’t hit us the same way. Because this is a child that we’ve seen, you know, playing in, you know, playing with her placenta and swimming around inside her mom and think that she might not ever we might not ever hold her as a live baby was devastating for us

Joe Rawlinson 8:50
How far along and the pregnancy was this?

Aaron Rieder 8:53
We’re about halfway a little after the anatomy scan. So somewhere in the 20 week range.

Joe Rawlinson 8:59
That is tremendously disheartening. I mean, we had, we’ve had several miscarriages too before kids were born in the situation is a little bit overwhelming, because it feels kind of out of your control. How what kind of options to the doctor present to you as far as going forward from that point?

Aaron Rieder 9:15
There wasn’t a lot that they could do. This is not a medical issue that they can fix. The options, the outcomes were it was more they discussed the outcomes outcome. Number one most positive outcome, the baby continues to get enough nutrients over the placenta to be able to survive until she is ready to be born. Option number two is if she stopped growing or slowed or growing down. Then they could they could initiate the delivery and they could deliver them early. And first question I asked Well, what does that do to the other one, you know, because we’ve got two lives here. And she said you got to take them both at the same time. And then of course the third option is She wouldn’t even make it to that point in time. And she would pass away in the womb, in which case, my wife would continue to carry the other twin to full term and then deliver birth to a live baby and a stillborn baby, which also is a, psychologically, I can’t imagine what my wife would have had to go through had she been presented with knowing that she was carrying around a dead baby. And we talked a lot, my wife and I are both teachers by education. And so we understand the effects of what giving birth prematurely can do on a child. We also understood the effects of what would happen if we didn’t give birth prematurely. And our daughter continued to suffer in the womb. And it’s, there’s no great answer. And so my wife and I talked about it, we’re both people of faith. In fact, I’m an ordained minister. And so we began reaching out to our spiritual advisors and things like that. But again, this is not something that anyone has any advice for, you know, there’s no, there’s not a lot of people with experience dealing with this, and continue to pray. And one of the things that I remember doing leaving the hospital is I remember, we had been kind of ambiguous about what we were going to name the girls. And I made the decision at that point in time that we were going to name that we’re going to name them. And that because I felt like, if she didn’t survive until she was born, then I at least wanted to acknowledge that she existed in our lives. And even if we couldn’t hold her live that she still had a place inside our hearts. And after that, it was became a matter of we went every two weeks down to Traverse City, which is a little over an hour away. And we did scans every two weeks to determine how much the baby had grown. And then my wife and I, after thinking and praying and looking up information decided that we kind of wanted to put a line in the sand that we didn’t want to make any decisions that would hurt the non affected child. And where would that be? And again, there’s no right answer to that either. Because you never know when you have a child premature. So we decided at eight weeks, and we kind of stuck to our guns on that. That we weren’t going to do anything other than monitor for eight weeks. And as it turns out at at 10 weeks, still, they came back and told us that the other one had stopped growing. We’re like what in the world? You know what, this is just crazy. But we kind of stuck to our guns. And I’m glad we did because when we went back for the eight week do scan, they the twin that was not affected suddenly grown a whole bunch. And our best guess is that probably they just miss read the size of the unaffected baby. And just kind of got it confused with which child was affected. So we ended up not delivering at eight weeks. And then we did deliver at six weeks. Six weeks premature. So

Joe Rawlinson 12:53
So about 34 weeks of the pregnancy.

Aaron Rieder 12:55
Yeah

Joe Rawlinson 12:56
That’s still pretty good considering the the big surprise you had in the middle to make it all the way to 34.

Aaron Rieder 13:01
Right, absolutely. Even a little further than we wanted, we wanted to make it to 32. And so to make it to 34 was great. The other advantage that these girls had is that we have so much so many breakthroughs in modern technology that allow premature babies to do so well outside the womb. And we were taken into what in my opinion is one of the best hospitals in the world is Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital. And they also were able to give my wife the steroid shot that helps develop the lungs, which was important for us because that meant that it six weeks, even though they were six weeks premature. Both girls came out breathing unassisted. Yeah, so that was a really good outcome.

Joe Rawlinson 13:40
So was the delivery scheduled? I mean, you knew you the babies had to come or did your wife exhibit some some labor at that point?

Aaron Rieder 13:48
No, no, she hadn’t. But we had been expecting that it would that we would be notified at any time that that our smallest child has stopped. It’s slowed down or growing or stopped growing. So we had we had our vehicle packed we had my mom was on standby because we had another child that needed to be looked after. And fortunately for us as far as ways Grand Rapids is it’s still about halfway between our house and where my mom lives. So we basically met her at the hospital where she was able to take my son so that we could focus on my wife being able to give birth to her to the girls.

Joe Rawlinson 14:24
So at the time your son was probably three or there abouts.

Aaron Rieder 14:28
Yeah, two and a half. Yeah.

Joe Rawlinson 14:29
Sounds really young to even understand what is going on with mom or twins or anything like that. How were you able to prepare him for the maybe the potential complications or did you not and how did you prepare him for him having sisters?

Aaron Rieder 14:46
Um, you know, we talked with them a lot about it. And it no there’s anything that you can do to prepare a two and a half year old for having twins. You know any children in his life much less to at once. I will say the one nice thing about a long NICU stay when you’ve got an older child is they do get to ease into it a little bit. So, and bear in mind during this whole time, you know, we had, we had basically had to relocate our family to Grand Rapids and was staying at the Ronald McDonald House. So there was a little bit of an upset to his schedule with all of that. But we would take him and the hospital allows him to go in for for every year old he is he can go in for that many minutes. So he was allowed to go into the NICU two to four minutes at a time. And so he had a routine that he developed, that he would go in, and he actually knew how to open up the isolettes. And he would put his hand in and he would touch, he would touch one sister, and then he would shut the isolette. And you’d walk over and he’d open the other one and touch the other sister. And then he was good to go and play for a while. We also did a gift exchange with him and the girls where he got them a gift. And then they got him a gift, obviously, you know, mom and dad actually bought the gifts. But, you know, told him it was from him told it was him, you know that it was from the sisters. And then it was kind of unique, he actually took really, really well too when we started to bring them home. So the larger twin Annabelle, she was able to discharge in two weeks from the Children’s Hospital. But we’re still at Ronald McDonald House. So we set up another crib in our room. And actually, it was funny, the first thing when we walked in with her, and it was about his nap time. And he was like he wanted to, like take a nap with her. You know, he was like, he like reached out his arms, like he wanted to hold her, you know, while he was taking a nap, which was really cute. Once we got them home, he did, I felt like he did a really good job. But you know, we made him useful. Tried to get him to help out, you know, go grab the diapers, go do this, go do that little things that that two and a half year old can actually do. And, you know, he also he was a very kind child. There were a couple times where I was feeding one and the other one was starting to cry. And he would just go over and he would just kind of pat him on the tummy or the back and just try and comfort them. So honestly, we really got lucky with that he was very easily. He very easily adjusted to having twins in his life.

Joe Rawlinson 17:14
Sounds like a great big brother, for sure. Oh, you mentioned one of your girls was in the NICU for two weeks. How about the smaller twin?

Aaron Rieder 17:22
She did a total of 34 days. And it was a complicated case. Because she was she was so small that they weren’t sure what abilities she would develop and when. Because she was not only small for her age, but she was you know, not only premature, but she was also a small for her gestational age. So things like regulating your own body temperature. You can’t really do that when you’re born at 34 weeks. And there’s a question is okay, is it you develop the ability to regulate your body temperature due to your age? Or do you develop the ability to regulate your body temperature due to size? And so because she was smaller, but older, it became a complicated like Is she ready to start regulating her own temperature. And so we had to work through that with the doctors. The other thing we ran into is we discovered that car seats only go down to four pounds. And so when you have a baby that’s born under four pounds, how do you take them home from a hospital if your car seat does not legally allow you to travel with a child under four pounds. So we had to figure out a way for that to work they actually have a specialist that comes in and evaluates your child in the car seat to make sure that they they can actually survive a trip home. So we had we had to deal with that as well. So there’s a lot of complications to get in or out.

Joe Rawlinson 18:53
So it was just a matter of her growing and getting bigger or does she need any kind of surgery or the procedures to help her get ready to leave the hospital?

Aaron Rieder 19:02
No, she actually did not need any surgeries. It was a matter of just growing you know feeding and growing and and getting bigger. So we were very fortunate along that lines.

Joe Rawlinson 19:12
For sure did you have to get a custom car seat or just the approval of the the car seat that you already had?

Aaron Rieder 19:19
Yeah, we we just got approval of the car seat we ended up using the Chico Keyfit 30 which is rated down to four pounds. And we found out from Chico that the reason why it was four pounds is because they didn’t have a crash test dummy. That was under four pounds. So that was the whole reason they said four pounds. So once we figured that out with the doctors they were able to establish okay, if we can just have someone watch her for the amount of time it takes to get to get you home to make sure that she’s safe then yeah, we can let you leave with her. So that’s how we did that.

Joe Rawlinson 19:53
So when you get the girls home and you’re all back united again as a family in your place, what kind of lingering challenges did you have with these newborns? Because they’re so premature?

Aaron Rieder 20:04
Yeah. Obviously getting them on a routine was key to getting them adjusted. Thankfully, that is one area where having them in the NICU for a while was kind of an advantage. Because in the hospital, they’re very much on a routine. And so we just continue that when we got home. And you’re always dealing with, you know, which child if you got two kids crying at lunch, which child are you going to go help first, and you’ve got to figure that out. We also had work challenges, too, we both worked full time, up until my wife gave birth. So we had to figure out work schedules and things like that as well.

Joe Rawlinson 20:40
How much time did you end up getting off?

Aaron Rieder 20:43
So my wife took, she either took her full 10 or 12 weeks. And then what I did, at the time, I worked in a nursing home when I worked 12 hour shifts. And then I also worked at a church on Sunday morning. So I did my FMLA paperwork. And what I would do is, I would, and on Thursday night, I would say goodbye to the girls and my wife, my son, and I would drive back up to Pataskala, Michigan where we live. And then I would work a 12 hour shift on Friday at 12 hour shift on Saturday, then I would get up and preach on Sunday morning. And then I would drive back to the hospital. And so because of that I didn’t take any time off the church from the church. And I only took one day off a week for my other job. And I had built up a lot of PTO. So I was able to do that. Probably until the girls were about six months old.

Joe Rawlinson 21:39
Wow, that is kind of creative.

Aaron Rieder 21:41
Yeah.

Joe Rawlinson 21:42
Getting some time off a bare minimum that you kind of needed to move things forward. How did feeding go with with newborns? I know, I they may have started in the hospital with bottle feeding. Is that what you continued to do at home?

Aaron Rieder 21:55
Yeah, we did. And my wife had exclusively pumped for our first child. And it turns out that she actually is is really good at producing. She ended up with our first child, she ended up creating getting an excess of milk. And we were actually able to donate that to a company in California. That makes actually a breast milk supplement for NICU babies. So it kind of come full circle. So she was able to overproduce for my oldest child. And then when it came to the to the twins, her body was even more ready to produce. And we decided to continue with exclusive bottle feeding simply because the girls were already used to it. Also, we could bottle them both at the same time. And so they were a little more independent that way. And then also that allowed me to take my fair share of turns and helping to feed the girls. That way it gave my wife a little bit of break. And then the reason my wife was able to produce so much is because when you have PCOS, often you have an excess of a hormone called prolactin. And you’ve probably only heard the old wives tale that you can’t get pregnant while you’re while you’re breastfeeding. Which we know is not true. But there’s a little bit of, of truth in it. Because when you’re breastfeeding, your body produces a chemical called prolactin. And that helps prevent you from getting pregnant but also helps you to produce to produce milk. And so her body when she was not pregnant, thought that she was constantly pregnant and producing milk or producing milk. And so when she actually got pregnant and had kids and then started pumping, that excess of the chemical actually worked to her favor and allowed her to produce an abundance of milk. She ended up donating with the twins, she ended up donating 10,000 ounces.

Joe Rawlinson 23:54
That’s fantastic.

Aaron Rieder 23:55
And as far as we know, and so other twin dads out there if you guys know of someone who did more, let me know. But we’ve looked it up and unofficially, she’s the world record holder for that. So kind of a neat little twist to everything.

Joe Rawlinson 24:06
It’s interesting. We’re so yeah, we’re kind of able to pay it back as it were to the other NICU attendees. What is something you wish you had known before this whole twin journey began that would have been really helpful?

Aaron Rieder 24:19
I think just developing the ability to multitask and figure out okay, who needs what, when and what I finally developed was the ability to like, Okay, I’ve got to decide which problem is easiest. Solve the easiest problem first, you know, if one child just needs a pacifier, but the other one is gonna need a full change in bottle, you know, you do the pacifier and then you then you help the other child that way you you can eliminate having two kids crying at once. And then once you get done feeding the first one, then you can go and feed the second one who seems to be a little bit more content.

Joe Rawlinson 24:51
Yeah, that’s good advice. For sure. That’s something you kind of learn through trial and error. exactly who’s valuable. If you can jump out the gate and do that from the get go. It makes things a little bit easier. So now that the girls are as you mentioned that they are in preschool, are they together? Are they together separated?

Aaron Rieder 25:07
Yeah, we definitely wanted them to be together, especially in the midst of the pandemic. Because with school closings and things like that, we didn’t want them to be in two separate rooms, and suddenly one’s at home and the other one’s not and things like that. And we elected to go to a small preschool, I think it’s got a total of 16 kids and two teachers. And so even if they were in separate classrooms, they really wouldn’t be that far apart. You know, just because it was such a small school and all the kids play together anyway.

Joe Rawlinson 25:37
You mentioned physical differences between the two of them, has that discrepancy just continued since birth, like maybe one has been bigger than the other.

Aaron Rieder 25:45
One has always been bigger. Annabelle, who was actually was the one that was born first, and the one that did not have in return growth restriction has always been quite a bit bigger than her sister, Abigail. At birth, Annabelle was four pounds, 13 ounces, and Abigail was two pounds, 11 ounces. And now they’re probably a good 10 to 15 pounds apart. And it’d been a few inches apart for sure.

Joe Rawlinson 26:14
Does that also lead to any kind of separation as far as milestones go like crawling, walking, talking, things like that?

Aaron Rieder 26:20
Not as far as we can tell, they definitely do have different cognitive abilities. It’s hard to say whether or not that’s a result of the iterator and growth restriction or not. Because especially up to four, you’ve got a lot of physical things, and they definitely had some physical things. As far as cognitive developments, it’s very challenging to tell. There are some things that that Belle does do a little bit better. But there’s a lot of things that Abby compensates well for her for in her life. We also, as far as we can tell Bella slightly above average and intelligence, although at four years old, who really knows it, whereas Abby is more slightly at average. But I mean, if you have a child with average intelligence, there’s there’s no problems. So the fact that one is doing a little bit better, doesn’t really concern us that much.

Joe Rawlinson 27:13
You had some ups and downs with with definitely some hardships through the twin pregnancy. And now with raising three kids, how have you been able to keep your relationship strong with your wife through this whole journey?

Aaron Rieder 27:26
we realized that, like everything else you’ve got to self care is you can’t take care of someone else, if you’re not taking care of yourself. And you can’t, as a couple take care of your children if you’re not taking care of your relationship. And so we’ve made a choice to continue to go on dates together, continue to look for ways to get time together and spend time together. Going and couples retreats, things like that. So definitely continuing to make your marriage a priority is something that we both agreed to. Because you know, the single most one of the single most devastating things we can do is tear apart our relationship and then and have it be disruptive to our kids as well. So I kind of liken it to you know, when when you rent an airplane, and they give you they talk about when the oxygen masks drop down, if there’s an emergency, they always tell you put on your own oxygen mask first, and then help your children. And I feel that’s the same way with parenting in general, that you need to help yourself first you need to make sure that you’re in a good spot. That way you’re able to give your children the help that they need.

Joe Rawlinson 28:35
That’s so true. You have to prioritize your relationship with your spouse on the journey and then together you can figure out the the other challenges that are coming your way. Aaron, when you look back on your twin parenting journey, your fatherhood journey so far is there anything else that you’ve experienced that you feel would be beneficial for our listeners to hear about?

Aaron Rieder 28:56
I guess I could share a couple of parenting hacks that have helped me out. There is a webpage out there called SmarterParenting.com and it is completely free. They do a podcast. So I’m sure some of your listeners are already into that. They also do parenting videos, as well as anyone can call and get a free one hour parenting coaching session from them. And they use a system called Teaching the teaching family model which is a well researched behaviorism style curriculum. And I will say having been doing this for now about a year and a half. It really does help to follow the steps and and learn some of those parenting skills. And I encourage if any of your listeners have any kinds of issues with parenting and struggles. They’ve got a whole they’ve got over 150 webisodes of different topics that they talk about with families. And again, it’s all perfectly free. So I use it professionally so I encourage your clients You know your listeners that they’re having parenting issues, it definitely helps. And, and I’ve noticed that it is, it has made my children’s life happier when I have made the effort to be a better parent to them.

Joe Rawlinson 30:14
Thank you for sharing that sounds like a great resource. I’ll link up to that in the show notes for the episode today. Aaron, as we wrap up today, if listeners would like to connect with you, what’s the best way to reach out?

Aaron Rieder 30:24
Definitely on social media. It’s aaronrieder is my profile name on Facebook. Don’t get into a lot of other social medias. So that’s the main way. Of course, I’m sure if they were to go on your page. I am an active follower of your page, they might be able to find me that way as well. I do use messenger as well that they’d be able to contact me if they had questions or follow ups.

Joe Rawlinson 30:50
Fantastic. Aaron, thank you so much for spending time with us today and sharing your story. We really appreciate it.

Aaron Rieder 30:55
I appreciate you having me.

Joe Rawlinson 30:57
Hope you enjoyed the chat with Aaron about his adventures as a father of twins, about the miraculous way in which they made through their pregnancy and end up having healthy twin girls. If you’d like to share your story like Aaron did today. I would love to hear from you. You can reach out to me on Instagram or Twitter @twindadjoe. I’m also on facebook.com/dadsguidetotwins. Or you can drop me an email [email protected] and I would love to hear from you. If you love podcasts, I know you love listening to audio. You can get a free audiobook version of my first book Dad’s Guide to Twins through a partnership with Audible. Just go to freetwinbook.com If you found this episode helpful, I would love if you would share it with another twin parent or someone who’s expecting twins that you may know. It would mean a lot to me. I appreciate that very much. Thank you so much for listening, and I’ll see you next time

Subscribe to the Podcast

To subscribe to the podcast, please use the links below:

• iTunes (for your iPhone, iPad, iPod, etc.)
• Stitcher
• Subscribe via RSS (non-iTunes feed)

Share Your Thoughts

Please let me know what you think of this episode of the podcast, you can contact me with any questions or comments or leave a comment on the blog.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating and review on iTunes by clicking here. It will help other parents of twins find the show!

Download the Podcast

Download the podcast in .mp3 format (right click and “save as…”)