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Multiples
breastfeeding/pumping questions
my twins are still in the NICU.. I have been pumping since they were born and so far right now I am keeping up with them.. I use the hospital grade pump in the hospital when I visit them and I have a Medela pump in style advanced at home.. these are my first kiddos so breastfeeding/pumping is new to me.. I bought larger flanges for my pump at home because the ones it came with felt a bit.. snug.. but now I wonder if they are TOO big... I put lanolin on before I pump which seems to be helping but the poor girls are SO sore... is this pretty typical??
also.. I am getting a bit stressed out about keeping up with the twins.. everyday their feeds increase (which is good) but I am barely keeping up.. is their anything I can do besides drink water to increae my supply?
and finally.. when I get home.. I wonder if I should just keep pumping and giving them bottles or should I even attempt to bring the babies to breast? I am very intimidated with the idea of tandem nursing.... any stories of what worked for you would be greatly appreciated.. thanks!
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Re: breastfeeding/pumping questions
Just keep pumping pumping pumping. I pumped every 2 - 3 hours for the first 6 weeks and was eventually getting 48 oz a day. Try pumping for longer amounts of time, too. Even if the milk has stopped coming out, add on another 5 minutes. I have also heard Mother's Milk Tea is good.
I wish I would have hired a LC to come to the house to help my babies latch. I think breastfeeding would have been SO MUCH easier than pumping and bottle feeding.
GL and I hope the babies are home soon!
After 2 rounds of IVF & 2 rounds of FET, we were blessed with identical twin girls!
1. Keep pumping every 2-3 hours during the day. I was in your shoes when the girls were born and the most "break" I gave myself was one 4-hour stretch at night. And pump for 20 minutes at a time. (Don't pump for much longer than that, because you can give yourself blisters that way. I've done it several times, when I've lost track of time and accidentally pumped for 30 minutes or so.) If you stick to that, your supply will go up eventually. You might not be 100% caught up every day for the next week or so, but eventually you'll be totally caught up, and you might even start making more than they need. Try eating oatmeal and drinking Mother's Milk herbal tea and drinking lots of water. Take a mug of water everywhere you go. And when you're in the NICU visiting, have the nurses let you practice nursing if they'll let you. If the nurses won't let you, talk to the doctors. If your babies are healthy but just early (like mine were), you should be able to practice fairly often. (We had nurses who told us not to practice too much because it "tired out the babies." The head neonatologist said that was crap, once we figured out we could be more assertive/demanding and talked directly to him.)
2. HIRE A GOOD LC. I dealt with four different LCs in the hospital and none of them got us nursing. None of them even said anything to me about how preemies often have problems latching because they're so young and their mouths are so small. I had to google to find that out once we came home and it still wasn't working. All that time, I felt like it was my fault that the girls weren't nursing and I was in tears every single day with frustration. Those LCs were so unhelpful. But then I got a recommendation for a really great LC who came to the house and worked with us for weeks, and she got both my girls nursing like champs. It was SO worth it. If I had to EP instead of nurse, I'd have been so much more stressed. If you can work to get nursing working, it's really worth it just for convenience's sake.
3. Good luck! And page me if you have any other questions.
pp's gave good suggestions. re. the flanges, they should be the same in hosp and at home i would think. would you consider renting the hosp grade model for at home? usually get more milk with hosp grade (we used the medela symphony).
even though pp had not the greatest experience with LCs in the nicu, you should give yours a chance. i had a couple good ones in nicu. we also had a bf clinic that was just for nicu babies, which we went to when we came home. talk to your nicu about what is available. BUT like pp said the quality of the LC is of utmost importance!
fwiw, i think the amt you are getting right now is really great!
I ended up using 30 mm flanges! Yikes!
And yes, they were definitely sore. It does get better with time, though!
After 2 rounds of IVF & 2 rounds of FET, we were blessed with identical twin girls!
I agree with pp about water, water, water. I was also very thirsty, though, so it was easy to keep drinking. I pumped every 2-3 hours, even during the nigiht. I did give myself one 3-4 hour stretch, just as pp said, but that was it. Otherwise, I had alarms going off all night for me to pump. I got lazy when the babies were about 3 weeks old and was letting myself sleep a bit, and my supply went down. I had to get hardcore to get it back and then I was so afraid of losing it again, that I was diligent. I'm so sorry your girls are sore...I didn't have that problem but can only imagine how much more you start to resent the pump when it hurts to even start and you don't even have a baby home yet.
One of my babies came home after 6 weeks in the NICU and the other after 7 weeks. I tried nursing them, one at a time, b/c they were still having the difficulties that preemies have and tandem nursing was just not an option yet. They needed one-on-one attention while nursing. I had one not great lactation consultant at the hospital and one really wonderful woman. I was shown how to help the babies latch and even practiced tandem at the hospital. Maybe a lactation consultant at home would have helped, b/c I ended up dropping nursing all together after two weeks of having both babies home. Both LO's came home on moniters and my little boy had to be given caffeine. That, on top of just having two babies and being exhausted, made me not want to spend 45 minutes nursing when each one could take a bottle in 20 minutes and someone could help me. This was just my experience, though, and I was not in love with nursing so much that I was dying to keep it up. Some mothers really love the connection and would probably have tried a bit longer. I pumped until the babies were about 3 months and then I used my reserved in the freezer to gradually switch them to formula.
Good luck! My babies just turned one this past week, so we were in the beginning of the NICU journey this time last year. I know exactly where you are and wish you so much strength and love.
I was pretty sore for the first 6 weeks of breastfeeding and when I switched to EP at 12 weeks, I was pretty sore again for a couple weeks.
A LC will be able to advise you on the size of the flange, have her check it out.
And whenever you can, try to bring the babies to breast. Even if they don't come home for awhile, there is a chance they will still get the hang of it. DS did not get the hang of it early on so I started pumping for him at the beginning and then all of a sudden at 4 weeks, he got it. So it can happen!
I have also heard even if they aren't nursing holding them on your chest for a little skin to skin time will help increase your supply. When DD was born she nursed really well at first but after that for the next 6 hours she would nurse well.
I was told even if she wouldn't nurse to just hold her on my chest which will help. I think she was just so tired the first 6 hours.
Do you best not to stress about what you are pump as it will not help, your supply.
Hope it all goes well.
A good lactation consultant can make all the difference- having someone who knows what they are doing and who can give you confidence in what you are doing. I wasn't too sore from pumping but when I transitioned over to nursing full time I was soooo sore. Get an LC to check your flanges to make sure they are the right size.
I was determined to breast feed so I pumped every 3 hours around the clock. After about 1.5 weeks I was making lots of milk and I dropped a pumping until they came home from the nicu. If you need to make more I wouldn't go more than 3 hours around the clock. Google lactation cookies- I don't know if they help but they sure are yummy. Try power pumping- 10 min on, 10 min off 3 times at a pumping session.
We just transitioned to full time nursing and its so much easier than pumping and bottle feeding. It was a lot of work but it was worth it to get where we are now. Start learning to latch and trying with them now. One of my 34 weekers started nursing at 34 weeks, 4 days old. My other twin didn't latch until 2 weeks after his due date. But we kept trying and he eventually (with the help of a nipple shield one time) got it. Tandem nursing is an incredible experience- but you don't have to do it. Its nice to be able to nurse them quickly for me when I'm home with all 4 of my kids by myself. But often I'll nurse them one at a time when I can. They will get to be faster nursers and it won't take too much time to nurse them back to back.
Its so overwhelming. Take it one day at a time and get some support. If my husband hadn't been so encouraging to me that I could do it and willing to take on more of the housework/childcare so that I could try nursing/bottle feed/ pump in those early days, I don't know that I would have made the transition over to exclusively breastfeeding. And I'm not cut out to EP. You EPers have my upmost respect.
this! I was getting so down b/c I had the babies practicing bfing for weeks with no success. Then lo and behold, during the week of their due date, all of a sudden 2 out of the 3 got the hang of it. They're still not nursing enough to replace bottles, so I'm pumping, giving bottles of breastmilk, and then having A and L bf a couple of times a day to "top off" their bottles. I like the idea of them knowing how to nurse, even if they don't do it full-time.
I've been nervous about my supply too, but it has been keeping up - remember the theory of supply and demand! I now keep track of the # of oz they eat and the # of oz I pump, and it's almost the same every day - somehow my body knows how much to produce. I'm now pumping anywhere from 45-55 oz a day!
ditto what others have said about water, oatmeal, and resting. hang in there!!!
I have been taking Fenugreek to help with my supply. I take 4 of the 610mg's 3 x day. It makes me smell like maple syrup but I am able to pump 64 oz in 6 pumpings a day (every 4 hrs about...sometimes longer at night). My girls each drink 4oz every 3-4 hrs so there's not much milk left over...ziggy piggies. Oh, and they're 5 weeks old.
I will not be able to breastfeed (for boobie anatomy reasons) and find that pumping and feeding is actually nice because my escape to pump is a nice quite 20 minutes of "me" time and then others can help with the feedings.
I agree about the "me" time! Pumping is 20 min when I don't have to do housework, deal w/fussy babies (unless I'm alone), etc. I get to read, play online, knit, etc. It's a nice break!