The perils of breastfeeding twins...

As a nurse who is well educated in helping patients breastfeed and understands the benefits of breastfeeding, you would think that I would have had it down pat. However, that was not the case. I felt like I knew nothing. During our hospital stay I had two wonderful lacation consultants (LC) to assist me in all the wonderful things that accompany breastfeeding. The latches, nursing pads, bras, pumping equipment, pumping rules, nursing pillow... and the list goes on and on.

 Because the girls were small and not very vigorous at breastfeeding I would let them nurse for as long as they could and then pump and give them a  bottle. When we got home this continued, however, after about a week they were still having problems latching. I was still pumping around the clock and producing more than enough and already had some saved in the freezer. I called our LC and they were able to get me an appointment to work with us. Thank goodness our insurance paid for it! Of course when we got there both girls latched right on and breastfed perfectly. Well, we got home and just like before the girls were having problems latching. I called the LC again and this time spoke with another LC who told be to come back so that we could use nipple Shields. The shield is small and flexible and fits over your nipple to extend to reach the top portion of the babies hard palate (roof of your mouth). This helps to stimulate the baby to suck. At the end of the shield are holes to allow milk to pass into the babies mouth. They are very easy to use and really helped the girls to breastfeed.

 We used these for about a month and the girls did pretty descent with them. They still needed additional feeding through a bottle, so I was still pumping a good amount of time. In the morning Jake would be up doing treatments before work and would do a feeding for me so I could get a little sleep. I would wake up and pump and get anything from 10oz to 16oz. However, throughout the day and by the end of the evening it would taper off to about 4 to 6oz (which is completely normal, I freaked out at first thinking that my milk was drying up, but it was not, this is why its good to pump after the morning feed, b/c you have more milk). After about of month of using the nipple shield I started to take it off because Neely was starting the leak all the breast milk underneath the shield and was pulling it off. At this time I was breastfeeding them about 3 times a day and bottle feeding/pumping the other times. Although we had made leaps and bounds with breastfeeding, it still was not enough and we would use what I had pumped to give them a little more ( SIDE NOTE: there is a lot of people that said by just putting them on the breast for as long as they want as often as they want would fix this problem, but for our circumstance it was not possible. I tried this one day and literally continuously breastfed them for 4 hours straight, started with both on, then Avery was done after 25 min, Neely was still on and hungry, switched her sides and then after about another 20 min Avery was rooting around, so then I put her on, in which time Neely was done... this went on back and forth, on and off for 4 hours. At this point I was physically exhausted, had no time to eat drink, go to the bathroom or nap at all. I gave them both a little bottle and they were finally satisfied.)

One bad thing about the nipple shields is that the awful sore nipples come back after not using the shield. So I would alternate to alleviate some of the pain and finally breastfeed them with no shield. At about 3 months I was still getting a significant amount of milk and able to store bag full. However, that all changed when I went back to work (the girls were 3 months). There was not enough time some days to pump as much as I needed to and slowly by 5-6 months I was getting little to nothing out and the girls were exclusively bottle feeding what I had stored up.  Thank goodness I had a lot in the freezer and were able to spread it out until the girls were 8 months old.



** I used the breastfriend, twin pillow and loved it. It allowed you to strap the pillow around you and place both babies in the football hold a the same time. At first the girls were so small that we would have to use little blankets to roll up and place under their heads to get them closer to me, but as they grew it got easier. I also used the ameda pump, I chose this one over the medela because it was a lot smaller and I could control the speed and suction at the times that I wanted it. It was small enough to put in the diaper bag or my work bag (so I did not have to carry two bags).




Daddy using the twin pillow for snuggle time in the NICU

Girls snuggling on the pillow after feeding.