So i'm really set on it, but have been getting so many different opinions/hearing a lot of negatives about it with twins. First I hear that it shouldn't be a lot harder with twins and your body will up it's milk production in a kind of supply and demand way. But then my husband was talking to his doctor the other day who had twins about a year ago who said she tried breastfeeding but gave up since they never ate at the same time and it was all she was doing and it was very hard.
So my question is for those who have breastfed twins. Is it as hard as they say or is it possible? Any tips or ideas??
I don't have twins or anything but maybe expressing your milk sometimes could help out? If you're set on breastfeeding it might be easier for you to have some bottles made up from expressed milk?
my friend had twins and i think she only fed one on the breast, the other took a bottle, she had them early tho at 31 wks so that might have been the reason. either way both are healthy and gorgeous now at almost 4 years old!
I BF both of mine up till 7 months old. Tom is still BFing but only cos I can't get the stubborn lil bugger to take a bottle but that's another story.
Once we got into the hang of things it's been absolutely fine. I use one of these cushions:
which is really solid and comfortable and feed them rugby ball style.
For the first couple of weeks I fed them one at a time till I got the hang of breast feeding and felt confident enough to try like this. Feeding them both at once saves loads of time and stops you having to listen to one cry while you finish the first one.
It can be a bit of a hassle at first trying to get them to feed at the same time and keep them in synch. Work on the assumption that if one wakes for a feed that you will wake the other one as well. It can be a bit tough mentally to wake a sleeping baby but it's far better to do that than to settle down to sleep yourself only to be woken half an hour later. I had two little wheel things to help me keep track of who had fed when or I wrote it on scraps of paper and post-it notes!
Within a few weeks we were pretty much all in synch and their feeding settled down to a more regular pattern.
Each baby had their own boob (again this didn't happen straight away, I used to swap around) because my MW said that a baby will stimulate the breast to get it to produce the milk they need. I figured if they had their own boob then the milk that that boob produced would be right for them IYKWIM. Plus Tom was better with the slower boob and Charlotte with the faster one.
From about 6 weeks, I expressed milk in the morning that they had in a bottle for their late feed because I'd read somewhere that this would help them to sleep through. Dunno how true that is, but mine both slept through from 10 weeks old.
The other thing to be prepared to do is EAT! I wasn't big to begin with but I'm about a stone lighter than I was before I was PG and it's all down to the BFing (that and the walking with the buggy and manic running around you do as a twin mummy ). I've been told by my HV that I'm buring 1000 calories a day BFing two. Get the high calorie snacks in!
I started with pretty low expectations of how long it would be possible for and I've had my low points usually around growth spurts but we've got over those. I thought if I could get to 6 months that would be a miracle, yet here we are!
It is possible. You can do it and boy can you feel smug about it!
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The following user says 'Thanks' to Helen for this post:
Thanks Helen, it helps a lot. I got one of those boppy pillows for nursing, plus we bought a double electric breast pump for expressing, but I didn't wanna have to use that until I get comfortable with just breastfeeding. I'm really wanting to just breastfeed for the first couple months so I hope everything works out!
my sister had twins and feed them both at the same time, holding them 1 under each arm and resting on pillows. she never topped them up with formula and fed them for almost 2 years. however every1 is different, try it but go with the flow, don't kick urself if u can't.
I BF Isaac and Amber until they were 8m.
I used to hold them one under each arm supported by cushions if I was by myself. Although it wasn't always easy or successful.
If Steve was home then I'd express and we'd bottle feed one and BF the other and swap them.
I used to wear a pink and blue nappy pin on my bra straps so I knew which baby to put on which boob, and then swap the pins after each feed.
i did it but my health visitor put me off coz she wanted me to feed them at the same time which made me uncombable as i could do nothing else for the 30 or so mins so i gave up completely after 6 weeks and told her to smeg off but did use a breast pump and bottles after that lol
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