Start-up offers advice to parents of multiple newborns

What if you had twins, or even triplets, and were trying to get the newborns onto some kind of regular feeding and sleeping schedule? Would you know how to do it?

Maybe not, and that's what Rebecca Kammerer's Mineola-based business, Parents Are Talking Inc., is all about. Kammerer, 41, a onetime nanny, day-care center owner and DJ at a country music radio station in Pennsylvania, gave birth to twins -- a boy and a girl -- four years ago.

"I was blindsided" as to how to get the babies on a schedule, "despite all the experience I had," Kammerer said. She started doing volunteer work for the Nassau County Mothers of Twins Club in Hicksville and realized how many parents needed advice.

In February she started the business, now located in the office of Dr. Elissa Rubin, owner of Happy & Healthy Pediatrics in Mineola. Rubin said she and Kammerer met at a conference.

"The timing was just right," Rubin said. "I built another room just for her."

Rebecca Kammerer and her husband, Richard Kammerer, 46, hold workshops called Twin Prep 101, in which breast and bottle feeding and getting babies on a sleep schedule are discussed. The charge is $90 for a two-hour session, and each workshop is kept to four couples at a time. The business has since expanded, Rebecca Kammerer said, to include workshops for single births, which she teaches herself.

The company's website is parentsrtalking.com.

One of the most important pieces of advice new parents need to know, say the Kammerers:

"You need to know your life is about to change. You need to be working as a team."