That being said my twins did spend time in the NICU and the NICU did have them on a schedule. They came home programmed to eat every three hours, which I did stick with for the first few weeks. When we were finally all home from the hospital F had nipple confusion. So with the "feed F with a bottle, nurse D, then pump for F's next bottle" routine I had going on, every three hours even felt like pushing it. Once I was finally able to get F breastfeeding well, and gaining, it was much easier to get off schedule into more of an on demand lifestyle (which is what is best for building & maintaining milk supply).
But let's start at the beginning. Forget schedules, let's talk about breastfeeding twins. It's possible! It may be a lot of work at the beginning but defiitely worth it. I could write an entire blog post about how
"worth it" it is to breastfeed twins but for today lets just stick to the how....
It all starts before your baby is born. It's a fight you choose to fight. It's not easy and there will be booby-traps. (I didn't make that up...they do call it that...I'm not that cheesy.)
and Part 2
The first thing that I recommend that you do is get a book on breastfeeding and read it cover to cover. I read The La Leche League's Womanly Art Of Breastfeeding . Study up as much as you possibly can...this will give you the best possible chance at a successful breastfeeding relationship. Then find a LLL group near you and go to a meeting... or if you are not that mobile, connect with the leader...either through email or phone, so she knows who you are and can help you if it comes to that.
Be sure to have all of your supplies together and ready to go. I recommend a nursing pillow, nipple cream (mother love makes the best!), some nursing tanks, nursing pads (I never needed these but a lot of women do...better to have a few ready just in case), fenugreek, and mother's milk tea. Also a breastpump can be handy but not always a necessity. If you don't plan on buying one at least have one picked out and set aside some money for it just in case.
The best thing that you can do is to nurse your babies within the first hour that they are born. Unfortunately I was not allowed to nurse or hold my babies until the next day even though there were no real problems. So I pumped like crazy and started taking my fenugreek and drinking my mother's milk tea to get started. I was very lucky that my NICU had donor breastmilk so we used that until my milk came in. (Colostrum is actually the best thing for newborn babies to have but our NICU would not allow just that.)
I actually had a horrible time with our NICU. I ended up bottle feeding them both (pumped breastmilk) just so we could get out of there. I was terrified of nipple confusion from the bottles and it did happen. But I decided that I would rather deal with nipple confusion at home than convincing the nurses that I could breastfeed them both in the NICU. Also my lactation consultant was very unhelpful... so don't go into the hospital thinking that you can rely totally on their LLC's. Some may be great but many are sub par.
As for tandem nursing it took us a while to get to that. F had nipple confusion so he took extra effort to get to nurse. But even when tandem worked for us sometimes I would choose to take turns nursing just because I liked doing it that way better. So just know that you don't have to tandem nurse...you do what you like best and what is best for you.
The last thing that I am going to touch on is percentiles and pediatricians. All of my babies (even my singleton) have been small and grow more slowly. This worries pediatricians (especially one's using outdated or formula fed percentile charts) and they may pressure you to supplement. Supplementing can be really detrimental so use your best judgement. (Our ped asked us to supplement, I took the samples & left, and never did it. I don't tell our ped everything. Most of them have very little training when it comes to nutrition. When we came back for our next appointment he was pleased with their weights. He probably thought I supplemented.)
Anyway here are some articles to help you through that situation if it ever becomes a problem:
Dr. Jay Gordon Look at the Baby, Not the Scale
Kelly Mom Average Weight Gain for Breastfed Babies
La Leche League Healthy and Petite
I wanted to leave you guys with some good resources to do your breastfeeding research. Supprisingly there are a lot of video's on YouTube that show tandem nursing. Here is one of them but look around because there are more. I wish I had known about this before my boys were born.
Here are some articles on how sleep schedules (especially Baby Wise) are linked to dehydration, failure to thrive, and premature weaning.
General Breastfeeding Twins Info
and a whole website dedicated to it
Breastfeedingtwins.org
and this fabulous post on breastfeeding in general
Timeline of a Breastfed Baby
and this fabulous post on breastfeeding in general
Timeline of a Breastfed Baby
Good Luck and please let me know if there is anything I can help you with or questions you would like answered. I have been successfully breastfeeding my twins for almost 15 months now. If I can do it so can you!
I almost forgot! Linking up with the for MOMs by MOMs on feeding & schedules
I almost forgot! Linking up with the for MOMs by MOMs on feeding & schedules
