Thursday, January 6, 2011

Feeding Twin Boys

Whenever I look online for how to feed twins, I usually get the same answer: breastfeed at the same time, tandem feed, hold a baby on each side and put the bottles in their mouths (which is pretty difficult to do!!).  Well, I've tried all of those and I never really got used to any of them.  If I breastfeed both, one usually weans off and starts spitting out milk and crying, so I have to pick him and up burp him, which disrupts the other baby... and then the whole feeding is ruined.

So, what my husband and I thought of was setting up what we like to call the "automatic feeder" hehehe.  We prop each baby up with pillows and blankets and put the bottle in their mouth and prop that up with blankets as well.  Then they just drink away while we watch them until they finish.  We did this a lot until they were a few months old.  Now they move WAY too much for us to do that.  But it helped a lot in the beginning!!




TIP:  If both babies are hungry/crying: feed one baby a little, then get the 2nd baby, feed him, then go back to the 1st baby and feed him the rest.  I do this from time to time whenever both babies are crying and hungry.  Feeding one baby a little in to begin with helps calm him down and satisfies his little belly until I can feed him again, in like 10 or 15 minutes.  

TIP:  Pump some milk into bottles before their feeding and sit it out at room temperature for an hour or two until they are ready to eat.  That way, you're one feeding ahead of them and have bottles ready.  If you breastfeed them, then you at least have a backup for when they're still hungry after nursing (this will happen, trust me).  

I guess it just takes practice and every parent will find their little tricks to feed their babies.  Not all of this will work for you, but it's nice to definitely pump and have some milk on hand!  

2 comments:

  1. Very helpful technique when you have twin babies crying at the same time and have no extra hands. I used a similar technique, i used a teddy bear that has adjustable arms. I had to stop the technique once they were passing around 2nd month because they started to move too much and to knock the bottle down.

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  2. “My twin boys had completely different nursing styles,” says Christina Tinglof, the editor of Talk About Twins. “One baby got very frustrated waiting for let-down .

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All who would win joy, must share it; happiness was born a twin. -Lord Byron