The number one question I am asked when people hear about the twins is: “how are you feeding them?”
Newborn babies, as you can imagine, come with several new and exciting challenges. But by far one of the hardest is learning how to feed them. Your body is trying to figure out what this whole breast feeding business is all about; you are navigating feeding schedules without compromising sleep schedules; and you are constantly checking on weight gains and deciding if or when you need to switch to bottles or exclusively pumping or adding formula vs exclusively breastfeeding. There are so many decisions to make and it’s hard enough when there is only one baby. Now imagine there are two babies who both need to be fed at the same exact time! Double the cuteness but also doubly challenging!
While I don’t have all the answers and I 100% support seeking out a lactation consultant for help, hopefully sharing what I am doing with the twins now at 5 months old can help offer some new tricks and ideas! So here we go:
Our “Schedule”
I use the term “schedule” very loosely because I don’t really follow a strict schedule when it comes to feeding the twins. I think this varies tremendously from person to person or family to family. Some people thrive on organized schedules. Or some people may be more pressured by their doctors to focus on feeds exactly every 2 or 3 hours because weight gain may be an issue. But for us, since both babies are both growing upwards on the growth chart, I am free to follow their cues and attempt to go with the flow, which works best for my personality and my family’s ever changing daily routine. SO that being said, here is a general idea of what goes down:
Morning Time: 6:30-7:30ish: Babies both wake up around the same time. Pajamas come off, diapers are changed and they are both put on the floor for tummy time. Olive loves tummy time so she will roll around and hang out there for awhile versus Ziggy who gets fussy quickly. So after about 30 minutes, I go ahead and nurse Ziggy while Olive stays on the mat. This gives me one on one time to just nurse him. I usually just go with whatever breast feels fuller at that moment and I keep him only on that breast and let him nurse until he either falls asleep or pulls off, could be anywhere from 15-30 minutes. Then he goes down for morning nap. Then I grab Olive and nurse her on the other side. And just like her brother, I just let her nurse until she tells me she is done, usually 15-30 minutes. Then she also goes either in her crib or swing to take a morning nap.
Doing this also gets them slightly on different schedules. For me it works best if they are not both screaming hungry at the same time all day long. So this way they are both napping at generally the same times but one will always wake up before the other, giving me those 1-on-1 opportunities.
Day Time: Throughout the day I go back and forth between nursing or offering a bottle. This is why I say I dont follow a schedule because anything can change. A few scenarios: 1) I am not here and the babies are with grandma, they will obviously only get bottles. 2) I am home and one baby gets fussy and the other one is still playing on the mat, content in the baby swing, or still sleeping, then I will simply nurse the one baby who is fussy. 3) Both babies are awake and fussy, I will nurse one and simultaneously give a bottle of either my pumped breast milk or formula to the other. When this is the case, I usually try to nurse Olive or give her breast milk as she is a little more sensitive to the formula and spits up a lot. Ziggy does not have much of a problem at all with the formula. I can usually do this on my lap but I have at times had to prop the bottle for the other baby in a Fisher Price baby seat in front of me. 4) If one baby is awake but I am attempting to make lunch for the older boys, trying to get Bear down to nap, helping wipe Liam’s tushy, etc, then I will make a small 4oz bottle and give it to the baby propped up in their chair so they can “feed themselves” allowing me to continuing doing whatever it was I was doing. You won’t hear any doctors tell you to do this, but my personal opinion is it’s okay if you are closely watching. I started this around 3 months once their head control was completely established and in fact now at 5 months old they can actually hold the bottle… sometimes!
Evening Time: Around 7:00pm after bath and pajamas, I feed them one last time to get them ready for bed. This is the only time of day that I still do a tandem nursing. The reason being that now I DO want them on the same sleep schedule and also Will is home and not working at this point so he can help hand me a baby, get situated for a tandem feed, etc. This is another long nursing session where I let them both really empty my breasts and nurse as long as they want until they fall asleep. Again I keep one baby on one side and they stay on that side the entire time. Who gets which breast is again just luck of the draw. I don’t keep tabs on that, its just whoever was handed to me first! My right breast has a slightly increased milk supply compared to my left, but so far I haven’t had to worry about it too much.
Night Time: Ziggy lately has been sleeping through the night around 7:30pm-6:00am. Olive still wakes up every couple of hours. Go figure. So when Olive wakes up at night, I will nurse her but just let Ziggy continue sleeping. In the early stages (months 0-3) I would wake Ziggy up and go ahead and nurse him along with her. This was because in those days, they are most likely not going to sleep through the night so to give myself a break and a chance to sleep longer stretches, I wanted them feeding/waking at the same time. So nursing the second baby, even if just a “dream feed” would help me achieve this. Or have your partner or spouse give them a bottle at this time. But once they can sleep for longer stretches and have shown that they can sleep through the night (which for Ziggy happened at 4 months), I say let them sleep and just feed them when they are up again!
The Supply List:
In the beginning I really relied on this twin pillow for tandem nursing. As well as having another adult to help me get set up and to help hand me a baby. I also used nipple shields for the first few weeks every other feed or so to help me with some minor pain as Ziggy was a little tongue tied and Olive was just overly aggressive! In addition to some prescription strength nipple cream I got from my pharmacist and using this balming cream in the shower, I ended up with only minimal pain despite feeling like I constantly had someone latched on. A good nursing bra also helps, this one is my favorite so far!
We decided to start adding bottles so that I could have help either at night from my husband Will or from grandma if I left the house for a more than a few hours. I really like the Tommee Tippee and the Nanobebe bottles as both feel similar to the shape of a breast and the babies have had no trouble switching back and forth from the bottles to the breast. As for pumping, I have been using this little pump that does a really great job! It is hospital grade so works really quickly and is “cordless” so I can sit anywhere in the house, car, or work when using it.
Although it is not impossible to find time to squeeze in pumping bottles of breast milk, there are some days I can’t get around to it. So I have been using formula as a back up. After trial’ing several different types, the Happy Baby Sensitive Formula seems to be the most gentle on the babies’ tummies and also does not have that noxious smell that several of the other formulas have.
Final Thoughts:
At the end of the day, if you are doing what feels best in that moment and for that day, then you are doing all the right things! If having a strict feeding schedule brings you joy then by all means make that happen. If it isn’t bringing you joy then take a step back and listen to the baby’s cues. Tandem nursing can be challenging, so if you need to nurse one baby and let someone else give a bottle to the other, that’s fine too. It is also special to have that one on one time with each baby. And by all means, if you need to give a bottle or give formula, that’s okay too! You’ve got this mama! xx
