Nursing Twins

Because of low glucose in the hospital, they started them right away on bottles. But I started pumping and trying to get them to nurse whenever I could. They had jaundice but were able to come home with us. At home they both stopped nursing well, so we would feeding them with breastmilk in a syringe attached to a feeding tube at the end of our finger.

By 2 weeks I felt like a champ to say they were both nursing well. I decided to feed them at the same time. I needed a lot of support with rolled up burp clothes or receiving blankets, for their heads and for me, especially when they were so tiny and could hold their heads up.

At the 2 week the doctor said we should supplement with formula, because they weren’t up to his expected weights. So my feeding schedule was: nurse until they didn’t have energy to do more, then give them 1 -2 ounces formula from a bottle, then pump and save the milk (I wanted to have enough supply when they didn’t need to the supplement anymore). It was a long process but well worth it. By 2 months we were off formula and could nurse exclusively. I just hated washing bottles. (I have nothing against formula, a baby’s gotta eat!) Plus all that pumping helped me to get a lot closer to my pre-pregnancy weight, an added bonus I didn’t expect as soon as it was.
I did the "football" position for a year. With my other kids I would always rotate positions like cradle, cross cradle, and football. I tried other positions with the two but this one worked the best for me. It's funny though that my other friend who nursed two sets of twins found the one that worked best was the first baby across and the second baby resting his head on the firsts belly or legs with his own legs going towards the back like in football.

This I got from a La Leche League member from Utah Valley. I thought it was great.

Nursing Survival Station--

When you sit down to nurse, make sure you go to the bathroom first [I always grabbed a snack before it was time to feed them, and a BIG drink of water], and have the following within arm's reach:

- Baby(ies)
- Nursing pillow
- Burp rags
- Diapers
- Wipes
- Nursing pads
- Nipple cream
- Water bottle
- Snack
- Remote control
- Phone
- Laptop computer [ I was NEVER this good}
- Journal
- Notebook*
- Knitting/crafts
- Book
- Pen/pencil

*tip - use your notebook to write down things you think of while you're nursing, so you can relax, enjoy your babies and know you won't forget about them later. Also have a list of household tasks to assign to friends and family when they visit and ask what they can do to help.

Pumping

With pumping I have liked the Lansinoh freezer bags for breast milk (I got our big freezer nearly half full in a couple months). And I love the sanitizing Medela bags. You add the pump supplies and some water and microwave them to sanitize. Saves time, and every little bit helps. You can also check with your insurance some will cover the cost of a breast pump. Awesome!!!!

I was ultimately able to nurse them for a year. I had a few cases of infection (horrible) once with thrush, but I was able to work through them, with pumping and discarding the milk and giving the babies bottles. Weaning them was very emotional hard on me. But I knew it had to happen sometime. I Loved that extra Oxytocin. And really missed that when it was gone.