Questions re: pumping and feeding
Hi ladies. I have been feeding our 4 week old twins exclusively breast milk since birth. Now that they are consuming more ounces per feeding than a couple weeks ago, my milk stash is obviously going a lot quicker than before. I've been very lucky with milk production, but again feeding two is a lot different than one baby!
my questions for experienced MoMs are: when is the best time to pump? In the hospital the LC told me to pump after a feeding, but I'd get a lot of milk. Now that the babies are eating more, I notice I don't get a lot of milk after they eat. I assume this is normal. But should I still pump to stimulate milk production?
also the witching hour(s) seem to be from about 6:30-8pm before bedtime and their last feeding before we go to bed. Last night we tandem fed around 6:45 but the babies literally had a meltdown at about 8. It took us until 9:30 to settle them, and this is not normal for us. Not to sound like an obnoxious parent but the babies are extremely good in the sense that they are not huge criers. So it's out of character for them. We finally gave them each a bottle to calm them. Which worked. So I obviously was not giving them what they needed before (by nursing). Could pumping too close to feelings have interfered with that?
thank you for any advice you may have. Very appreciative!
12/27 - surprise BFP - due August 2014
Re: Questions re: pumping and feeding
I remember evenings early on where I was literally on the couch nursing fussy babies from like 6 till 10. They are frustrated because the milk isn't flowing as fast as they would like, but it doesn't mean they aren't getting enough, they are doing exaclty the right thing to increase your supply.
So hang in there, make sure your partner is feeding you lots of good snacks and know that this too shall pass if you decide to keep up with the nursing.
When you say that your stash is going sooner, do you mean the excess that you've pumped and that you're dipping into that to meet their demands? If that's the case, then yes, I would keep pumping after every feeding to try to build your supply.
A friend of mine had her twins at 34 weeks and they spent about a month in the NICU. I believe she pumped very often for 6-8 weeks, then started cutting back (and eventually stopped pumping entirely), but she always had a huge oversupply. I would suggest meeting with an LC to go over your specific situation and come up with a game plan as to how often you should pump and when you can change that.
Good luck, and you're doing great!