Breastfeeding multiples: the early months
Please comment here to add any perspectives you have about those first weeks of breastfeeding multiples.
Comments will be kept open indefinitely so that moms of multiples can continue to learn from each other. Please keep your comments respectful and encouraging.
All I can say about the first couple of months is that it was painful. I can honestly say that I did want to quit. It hurt so bad my toes would curl up and I would close my eyes. My mom promised the pain would go away after one month so I stuck with it. It actually took about 5 or 6 weeks and then somehow it didn’t hurt anymore. I can’t explain it. All the lactation people told me that breastfeeding is not supposed to hurt, blah, blah, blah. But it did. At least for me. But it does go away. So if you’re in pain the first few weeks, just push through it. It will go away and it is so worth it.
Here’s a copy of an email I wrote Persephone. She asked me a few things: why I chose to breastfeed, what it was like for me, how I mananged it, and what resources I used. If anyone reads this and has further questions, PLEASE email me. I’ve emailed with many moms and moms-to-be who wanted to bf twins. I don’t mind~I’m very glad to help. Here’s the email:
I decided to breastfeed (bf) because it’s the best thing for babies (no matter what anyone else tells you) and I like a challenge. Originally I had thought to nurse one and give one formula and then switch at the next feeding. Then I read a few books and talked to a few people and learned that it was possible to bf both. Part of it was my family; my mom bf her kids, my sister bf all 4 of hers, my sil bf her 2 kids. I’m a fan of books by Dr. William Sears of attachment parenting fame. If you read his book on bfing (cowritten with his wife, an RN who bf all 8? 7? of their kids) you’ll see how valuable breastmilk can be to an infant.
You can find it here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316779245/ref=pd_sim_b_5/002-3084617-5318422?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155
Just because, here’s another book I found (mostly) helpful: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060957239/sr=8-3/qid=1145691921/ref=sr_1_3/002-3084617-5318422?%5Fencoding=UTF8
I’m not saying that formula will hurt kids, but it’s not the best. And if I can give my kids the best, even if it’s a bit more difficult at first, I will do my damnedest.
I can’t say what it would have been like to formula feed. I don’t know if it would have been easier at the beginning. I would say this: parenting isn’t easy and parenting twins is especially challenging in that first year. I wasn’t looking to make this particular part of parenting easier. I was willing to deal with the difficulty of learning to bf and instead made other parts of parenting easier. I’d rather let my kids stick stuff in their mouths or throw food on the floor. Those are the parts of parenting where I’m willing to be lazy and do what’s easiest. Does that make sense?
There’s just so much stuff in breastmilk that they can’t replicate in formula. It’s like comparing apples and oranges. See this: http://askdrsears.com/html/2/T020100.asp They’re constantly discovering new stuff in b-milk that helps with development, intelligence, health, etc. I was not willing to shortchange my kids in this area simply because they were born together.
It took a lot of support to learn to bf. A lot. I needed my husband to be on board 100% because it was pretty damn discouraging in the beginning. I went thru 7 lactation consultants, my awesome pediatrician, his wife (also a LC), and a few other random people before I got it down. I remember sitting in my ped’s office and crying because my girls were still losing weight. The last thing I needed in this situation was for him to suggest formula. Instead, he supported me, offered to hospitalize all 3 of us for “intensive bfing support” and gave me his wife’s phone number. He was awesome. My mom and MIL were willing to bring food, do laundry, offer support, hang out even though I was constantly topless, and kept telling me what an awesome job I was doing. Moxie (http://moxie.blogs.com/askmoxie/) and Jamie ( http://selkie.typepad.com/) were awesome references, too. (I said “awesome” a lot there. Sorry.)
I would say the first 4 weeks were pretty frustrating. My girls were born at 35 weeks, 2 days and didn’t have good suck-swallow reflexes. We went home 48 hours post-birth and we probably shouldn’t have. The best thing that happened is that we had to go back to the hospital for bililights (jaundice treatment). We met with “lactation linda” there and she was awesome. (Again with the awesome!) She brought us all the NICU stuff that they use to teach preemies how to breastfeed. There are nipples of varying difficulties and you move thru them as your kids start draining bottles faster. We fed them with NICU bottles for the first 4-6 weeks. If this happens to you, here are the 2 main important points: ALWAYS start with the breast. I would bf for 15 minutes and then pass the baby to my husband to bottle feed (with b-milk). Then I would do the same for the next baby. THEN I would pump. I think we supplemented with formula a couple times that first week and then I built up enough of a stash that we didn’t give formula ever again. 2nd important point: get a hospital grade pump. I rented mine for $48/month. Even with bags and pads, it’s waaay cheaper than formula for 2.
My husband stayed home from work for 3 weeks and then worked part time for 2 more. Then he went back full-time. During the time he was home, we did shifts. I would sleep from 9pm-3am and he would feed them expressed bm. Then he’d wake me up and sleep from 3-9am. I would nurse, bottle feed and pump. We did it together during the day, napping when possible. I won’t lie to you: it was our life for 4-6 weeks. It’s pretty much all we did. I breastfed and he supported me.
The good news is this: little by little, the nursing sessions got longer and longer and they took less and less bottled milk. Eventually, we just stopped giving them bottles after I nursed them. I still pumped for a few minutes after I nursed, just to trick my body into increasing my supply and also to build up a supply of frozen bm for when I went back to work. (Soon I only pumped after every other daytime feeding and then I only pumped after the morning feeding. This was when my supply was well established and our freezer was stocked.)
I would wholeheartedly encourage you to bf. I would also strongly discourage you from listening to everyone who tells you that “formula is fine” and “you can quit if you want to.” Both of those things are true, but you need to be pretty committed to make bfing work. And once you get through those first difficult weeks, it’s so freaking amazing. You know the cliche about how nothing worth having is easy? That’s so appropriate here.
http://indigogirl.typepad.com/linda /2004/07/its_worth_it.html
http://indigogirl.typepad.com/linda /2004/10/on_baths_and_br.html
http://indigogirl.typepad.com/linda /2004/11/cosleeping.html
http://indigogirl.typepad.com/linda /2005/04/a_day_in_our_li.html
http://indigogirl.typepad.com/linda /2005/06/ambivalent.html
Above are a few of my blog entries I think might interest you. I didn’t write a whole lot about bfing because it’s such a derisive subject. If I wrote about how great it was and how bm is best for infants, someone will take that as a slam on them and what they did.
I wish that I had read something like this when I was trying to breastfeed the boys.
I am not going to list my breastfeeding posts, as they may be discouraging to women planning on breastfeeding their newborns. I will, however, state the advice I wish someone had given to me before the babies were born. Find a lactation consultant and establish a relationship with her prior to the delivery of your babes. Meet with her for a session soon after the babies are born, even if it seems like everything is going well. It will be the best money you ever spent, and that’s coming from a cheap woman. I found the hospital LCs to be fine for teaching some initial techniques, but really not informative enough for very successful nursing of two babies.
You can do it, it is hard, you will get less sleep at first, not because formula fed babies sleep better, they don’t, but because you will be waking for every feeding to help establish milk supply THEN you will pump after the nursing session, while your partner is snoozing away next to you.
I had the opposite problem from Jody and actually pumped too much and had overabundant supply.
It IS worth it, you WILL forget how the sleep deprivation felt, it IS hard, you CAN do it.
If some difficulties arise that don’t allow you to continue nursing one or both of your babies, remember you gave it YOUR best shot. I was and still am successfully nursing one of my two 21 month-olds. The other had serious reflux and some swallowing problems (which I now suspect is somehow linked to his reflux) that made breastfeeding unsuccesful for us. I have mourned and dealt with my guilt and if something like this comes up, you and your baby(babies) will be ok. I promise.
The early months… My girls are now 21 months old, and I can barely remember the early months. But the bits I do remember are clear.
I don’t remember their first feeds at all. I remember the first feed for my older two (singletons). I have pictures of the first feed for each of my twin daughters, and the first time I managed to tandem feed them, that same day… but I don’t remember it at all. Given how foggy my memory is of the first few months, that’s a small sorrow, but an expected one. At least I have the pictures.
I remember being astonished that a football hold not only worked for one, it worked for both. Neither of my older ones could stand football hold. Then astonished again when I could use hold after hold and they put up with the contortions. But hey, after all, they’d been squashed up against each other all along, I guess that would be normal for them.
I remember in the first days, identifying them by their nursing style as much as anything else. Meriel was ‘the shark’ – she’d lunge at my breast, mouth wide, and chomp hard. I’d have to detach her a few times to get her latch right, because she was too fast for me. She’d get it right if I left her alone and let her figure it out, though. Trying to help too much made her frustrated. She could get there fine on her own, thanks! Rowan, however, wanted to be helped, held and supported, into position. Her latch was more gentle, but also a bit on the ‘easygoing’ side – lip in, lip out, whatever. Her muscle tone was low-ish, and she just couldn’t get there without help, but didn’t seem to mind the interference. I had to fix her lips over and over and over. Those general attributes still describe their personalities very well.
I remember having to chart Rowan’s feeds carefully, because she developed jaundice, enough to have a bili-light tethering her to the nearest power outlet for a few days. She looked like a glow worm, greenish light glowing through her shirt. Tracking the feeds was challenging, with two eating on their own schedules. It was also very important, as I found I was forgetting who ate last, and which side. I became more anxious that I’d forget one for a few hours… but reassured by having the log to check back on, since my memory was so hazy.
I remember the visiting nurse looking around my bedroom, on the first followup checkup for the jaundice, and wondering what she thought of our big bed, the two ‘snuggle nest’ beds lined up on one corner, the EZ2Nurse2 pillow still buckled around my waist. My newest babies were just a few days old, and I was awash in hormones, and more tired than I could have imagined – and yet, less ‘wiped out’ than I thought I’d be, likely running on hormones and adrenaline. In other words, likely to be sensitive to judgement. Fortunately, she was all for anything that helped me breastfeed longer. She laughed outright when she realized the end-table next to the bed was actually a dorm fridge. Fully stocked, so I didn’t even have to get out of bed to feed my breastfeeding-twins-starvation.
I remember thinking the two of them were so tiny, and fragile, and floppy. My older two had been much bigger, even though ‘the girls’ were quite normal sized (6 lbs 10 oz and 7 lbs 6 oz). I remember feeling an almost painful urgency for them to grow, needing them to get big from my milk (though I’m sure that feeling is the same no matter how you feed them!).
I remember sitting in the recliner, nursing pillow in place, knit blankies propping little baby hineys to keep them from sliding anywhere at all, my step-mom handing me a sandwich over their heads, and me having to hold my elbows out to the sides to eat it without bonking the babies. Brushing crumbs off my front, and picking them off the sleeves of my little ones fallen asleep at the breast.
I guess I remember enough. Enough to know that I succeeded in part because I had the equipment I needed, and that was because I had the support I needed, and that was in no small part because I asked.
The support was as simple as my DH stocking the fridge, as broad as friends who would pitch in to buy me a minifridge, as deep as my family members committing to driving almost an hour each way just to be there when I asked, every week. Humbling, but then just asking for the help in the first place was humbling.
The WIC billboards around here say ‘loving support makes breastfeeding work’ – don’t I know it! That, at least, I remember very clearly.
I breastfed my twins for an entire year. The reason I had planned on it was first of all the financial side of it, but then also because some of my extended family didn’t think I could do it with twins, and since I’m stubborn, I had to try it! It worked out really good for me, the boys nursed at the same time almost always, it was my way of keeping them on the same feeding schedule. I didn’t pump at all with them, so they were exclusively given the breast. Sometimes it felt lonely to know that I was the only source of food and so I had to always be near by, but the bond I have with them is like nothing ever I could have imagined. I would encourage everyone to try it!
Great post by Persephone about her experience:
http://bikkurim.blogspot.com/2006/08/my-word-this-took-forever-to-write_07.html
If I could do something a little different it would be to not feel like I had to hide in my room. See, I was living with my parents because my husband was in the Navy and you can guess how that goes, and my Dad, I thought, would feel weird seeing me nurse my son and pump. When I was a kid he was very strange about “private parts”. So I hid in my room, a little depressed already because my husband was gone, a little from baby blues I think and I looked at the same 4 walls, no tv, no radio just me and 2 boys. I nursed and pumped and then fed the younger who wouldn’t latch on (until he was 6 weeks old). And since you feed about every 2 hours and it takes so long to get ready and feed and then get them settled, including diaper changes and all I barely had time to eat. I guess I would ask my Dad how he really felt. I think that if I had it would have made all the difference in those first weeks. If he knew I put myself through that because of what I thought he would feel I think he would be upset, a me and himself.