Should You Wait to Begin Preparations until You Know the Twins’ Gender?

I got a question asking if you should wait until you find out the gender of your twins during the twin pregnancy before you begin your preparations. The short answer here is no, because there are a lot of things that you can get ready for your twins.

What to Get Ready

Regardless of their gender — if they’re boy-girl, boy-boy, or girl-girl twins — there’s a lot you can do to get ready. You can get things like cribs, car seats, changing tables, and other baby gear that wouldn’t really matter if it’s a boy or a girl. Considering the fact that your infants, whether they’re boys or girls, are going to have very similar needs — in fact, the same needs. They’re going to need to eat, they’re going to need to sleep, they’re going to need you to change their diapers, and you need to repeat that cycle.

A lot of the baby gear that you have to support your infants will be generic and you can use it for boys or for girls.

Nursery Plans

One thing you may want to consider doing is keeping your nursery as simple as possible. When our girls were born they joined two older brothers in our home, and the boys’ room was already painted a light blue color, and we decided to move the boys out of that room into another room, and move our baby girls into what was their brothers’ former bedroom. We kept the walls blue, and it didn’t really matter for our girls. They still survived those infant months, they still did great, and we were happy with the nursery.

So if you want to keep your nursery simple that will help eliminate a lot of the stress you may have of customizing decorations in the nursery for boys or for girls, and those can always be added later if you wish.

Daily Use Items

Now we’ve talked a little bit about the durable baby gear in your home and in your car, but also consider the things that you’re going to go through very rapidly like bottles for your twins, diapers for your twins, onesies, and other simple clothes that they’ll use as infants — burp clothes, blankets, and so on. Many of those things can be prepared before you know the gender.

So do you need to find out the gender before you begin your preparations? Probably not. If you’re already at the end of your first trimester, I’d say go right ahead and start making those preparations today.

You can always take our twin gender prediction calculator to give you ideas of what types of twins you should expect. Or for now, stick to the basic twin preparations outlined above.

This topic was originally addressed on the Dad’s Guide to Twins Podcast Episode 70: Dual Feedings, Gender Preparations, Guy Friendly Diaper Bags. Picture by Megan.