Two Breasts for Two Babies, Part Two: My Experience Nursing Twins to 22 Months

Nursing Two Babies When You Are Home Alone:  One Step at a Time

There is the rule never to wake a sleeping baby.  Then there is the guideline to feed your multiple babies at the same time.  Clearly, these are contradictory.  I wouldn’t always wake my twin girls.  I couldn’t bring myself to do it if one was learning to sleep longer stretches.  So I created my own madness, especially at night.  During the day, though, I did feed them at the same time since I have two breasts and two babies and let-down is simultaneous. Made sense to me.  Around 8 months, though, the babies were too wiggly and interested in each other.  I started feeding one at a time until they were old enough to calm down again to nurse without turning their heads with my breast still attached or pushing off with their feet like tug of war.  It was nice to get one-on-one time, but it obviously made feedings take twice as long for those few months.

It is a bit tricky to burp the babies by yourself, but you will eventually be able to nurse one while you burp the other and then switch.  You can also burp both by crossing your arms behind the babies’ backs as they lean against your shoulders.

To nurse independently feels like quite an accomplishment, but it did happen and got easier.  Here’s one suggestion based on what I did:

First, put the babies one at a time in a safe place where you are nursing.  For me, I took up the whole bed with pillows, which I felt was safest, though I did use the couch too.  Place one baby securely on one side of where you will sit.  Then, pick up the other baby and get yourself seated and lay that baby down on the other side.  Then, situate your Boppies and pillows.  Next, pick up one baby and put the baby on one Boppy and repeat for the next baby.  Then, latch one baby and then the next baby and you will be efficiently nursing both babies.  It sounds like it is in slow motion, but, believe me, when your babies are crying, you will get fast and it will be a bit chaotic for a few minutes.

Now, which baby do you latch first?  Do you take the one who screams the loudest, or alternate so the “quieter” one is being rewarded too?  Well, that’s tricky and I don’t have the answer.  I like to think I was fair and tried to alternate babies as I did breasts (believe me, I kept charts and kept track of everything for way longer than I needed to), but I’m sure I tried to quiet the loudest one who was getting on my nerves a bit more than the one waiting patiently.

Anyway, so they both are nursing and then they fall asleep.  Now what?  You are stuck under a pile of pillows and multiple babies.  If there is no one else to help you transfer a baby to a place to sleep and you don’t want to take a nap right there after you detach your nipples, then you can do the reverse procedure.  Gently shift one baby ON THE BOPPY (that is important if you want to minimize the chances of the baby waking up) off your lap onto the bed and prop with another handy pillow.  Then, take other baby to a sleeping place and hold your breath that you are successful and run back for the other one.

Okay, so the transfer while asleep didn’t work well all the time and yet somehow I managed to stay hopeful.  Until you learn to nurse lying down your life will pretty much suck as you give suck, but hang in there!  It’s totally worth it.

I admit I nursed the babies IN THEIR CRIBS sometimes to get them to just go to sleep and not have to worry about the transfer. Helps to have a low crib with low sides for that, but it hurts your back and when you look at your deflated boobs that fall to the bottom of your ribcage you’ll remember sadly the times when you told yourself “I don’t care what happens to my boobs, just go to sleep darn it!”

Night Feedings: The Bookends

Once I learned how to nurse lying down my whole world changed!  I co-slept* for close to 6 months and slept between the babies, flipping back and forth all night long. It helps NOT to look at the clock in the middle of the night and just go back to sleep.  Unless, of course, you have to burp your baby!  For many months, my husband and I had a routine that felt like walking on egg shells and I’m sure there is a better way and at least a hundred other ways, but it’s what worked well enough for us.

At night, I would nurse one baby to sleep lying down (at less than 2 months we started this I think).  My husband would bring me the other baby and I would oh-so-carefully flip over and nurse the other baby while he would scoop up the first baby to burp and then return to me when she was finally asleep.  Then, he would take the second baby to burp and return to me.  If I was lucky and they were totally out, I could escape between them for a couple hours, but sometimes they would wake up and we’d have to start over.  If I got away, they would inch towards each other so when I got back into bed, I had to shift them so I had space to sleep in the middle.  I felt like I was bookended, though.  And my back was uncomfortable since I couldn’t really stretch out.  Truthfully, I could sleep a lot better than if I had to get up and put a baby back and forth in a crib and do it again an hour later, since I was a sucker and wouldn’t wake them at the same time.  In fact, the arrangement we had with co-sleeping (and I know it isn’t for everybody) worked well BECAUSE they didn’t wake at the same time.  It was definitely cramped, though, even in our king sized bed.

So, at 6 months, they moved to their own room with their own cribs and I got my space back.  Then, I nursed them in their room and transferred them back to their cribs, but I’d end up nursing one on the floor and would just plain fall asleep until the other one woke up hungry and I’d repeat the process.  The floor wasn’t any better than being squished, but I wanted to move them out of my bed so this is what I did for way too long.

Once we dropped the night feeding at 18 months, the girls started sleeping really well through the night.  I wish I had dropped the night feeding sooner!  It is just so hard to know what to do and there is so much information and so many opinions out there. Remember, this is just what we did…and I’m not even saying it worked well, it’s just what we did to get through.  You will figure out your own rhythm and, as long as it works well enough for you to get through the day, it works.

When to Stop Pumping: When it No Longer Makes Sense

I was lucky enough to be home with my girls and was able to breastfeed them for most feedings.  The girls got a bottle of breastmilk at least once a day that was given to them by another family member and I could do other things during that feeding.  When the family was no longer around and I realized I was the one who was giving them their once-a-day bottle, I decided it was time to stop pumping, which was perfect as we were going out of town and I really didn’t want to deal with it on the trip.  I pumped for almost a year, very frequently at first, then about 3 times a day for a couple months, then down to once a day to just have some in the fridge in case I needed to go out or take a break.  And you will need breaks. While you might feel like a cow at times, you are doing something so incredible that only you can do and it will not last forever.

Weaning: Nice and Slow

I was the one who was ready first.  I was tired of having my breasts tugged on to the sides (by the end when the girls were older, I would lie down and they would each lie down next to me and nurse, but they would pull my breasts and nipples so that now my nipples are permanently angled out to the sides).  My back hurt from leaning over (I know you are supposed to bring the babies up, but when the only comfortable position is with the babies cradled on your lap while sitting on the floor, that isn’t an option).  I needed to sleep through the night for once.  I didn’t enjoy nursing anymore, and I felt really guilty about it.  So, I knew I was done.  Plus, I was going away for a wedding a few months later and wasn’t sure how that would otherwise work.  But we took our time since we weren’t really in a hurry and the girls had expressed no real desire to stop nursing for comfort.

We dropped about one feeding a month.  The night feeding was the first to go at 18 months.  That was hard since I was used to nursing them to sleep, but we all survived that stage.

Next, we dropped the session before bed, which was the easiest, remarkably, to drop.  We replaced nursing with tons of cuddles and an extensive routine of hugs and reading with cow’s milk in a new cup with a straw.  In fact, we built up getting big girl cups for so long that the girls were super excited when we finally brought them out.

After several weeks, I did the same routine for the feeding before nap.  That one took longer because, instead of nursing the girls to sleep, they were awake in their beds and chatted for a long time before they would eventually sleep. But they did.

Finally, the last feeding we dropped was the one in the morning. That one was the hardest for me to let go since I could nap a bit while they snacked upon waking.  Again, we just distracted them and gave them milk in a cup first thing and it was no big deal.

By 22 months old, I wanted to be sure we were done so I could leave for my friend’s wedding and come back to kids on cups and have my now unrecognizable body back.  It worked.  I was more sad than I thought I’d be, probably because of the guilt. But they were ready too.  Within 3 days of weaning, there were no more questions.  One of my daughters developed a habit of stroking the flab under my arm once she was weaned as a seeming substitute, but even that has worn off now.  Every so often, the girls point to my breasts and say “when we were babies, we drank milk from your breasts” and I’m glad they will always know that I did that for them.  My two breasts did their job for twin babies and are now retired.

*For more information on co-sleeping safety guidelines, see: http://cosleeping.nd.edu/safe-co-sleeping-guidelines/

Amanda S. is a SAHM mom of twin girls in Chicago.

Our Unexpected Journey: How I become one of those “toddler nursing moms”

Brand-new baby girl!

I always planned to breastfeed my children.  I remember my mom nursing my brothers.  It seemed the logical choice. It was cheap and easy.  But, I didn’t go into nursing with a real plan.  I figured I would nurse at least until my daughter needed solids and go from there.  Then I did some research and learned that the recommendation was to nurse for a year.  So, that was my goal.  I could do a year of nursing, right?  Sure, it seemed like a long time but if that’s what’s best for my daughter then I would take a stab at it.

Fast forward 12 months.  My daughter was now a year old, the magical age of weaning.  She loved solids, but didn’t actually ingest a large quantity of them.  She still liked to nurse, A LOT and honestly, I liked it too.  I loved the quiet time it brought.  I loved how it helped her go to sleep.  I loved that it was a near-instant fix to anything wrong in her world.  And really at one year old, she was only a day older than 11 months and 29 days.  And the day after that, she was only one day older.  She didn’t suddenly transform into from a baby that depended on my milk for life into a child who didn’t need or want it in a single day.  She wasn’t ready to wean and I wasn’t either.  By this time, I knew that the World Health Organizationrecommended nursing for 2 years and then as long as both mom and baby wanted to.  So, I changed my goals and aimed for 2 years.

One year old!

I never intended to be a “long term breastfeeder”.  I mean, really, moms that nurse their toddlers are weird.  But my little girl wasn’t a toddler, she was my baby.  Even as an independent 18 month old who preferred to run off and play rather than snuggle with Mama, she was still my baby.  And when she was nursing at my breast, I didn’t see some child that was too old to be there.  I saw my baby right where she had been from birth.  It was familiar and comfortable and not at all weird.  But you couldn’t have convinced me of that a few years ago!

Along the way during the second year, we discovered that we were pregnant again.  Nursing became much less comfortable for me. We ended up doing some night weaning in order to gain more sleep, preserve my sanity, and give me patience for the more important (in my daughter’s eyes) morning, daytime and bedtime nursings.  Then we had a miscarriage.  Nursing was no longer painful and in fact the tables turned.  What I once did to comfort my little girl was now a huge source of comfort to me.  As I healed physically and grieved emotionally, my daughter’s patience and love and nursing were such a blessing.  We relaxed on the night weaning, although not completely since we had made great progress.

Two year old!

Fast forward to her second birthday and oddly, she was only one day older than the day before.  We still nursed, but not as often.  She had more important things to do.  It was still our morning ritual and I knew that morning nursing will be the last one to go.  A few weeks later, we found out that we were expecting once again.  We nursed on and off and I was thankful that she was old enough to understand when Mama needed a break.  She moved happily out of our bed and into her own and nursing decreased even more.  Then all of the sudden, we went a whole 24 hours without nursing.  Then it was a few days.  And then a week.  And then I looked back and realized that my sweet little baby, now an active 2 year old, had weaned; all on her own.  There were no tears, it was just a natural step.  I’ll admit, while I am excited to have a little break before I have another babe at the breast, it is bittersweet to know that chapter of our relationship as mother and daughter has come to a close.

3 years ago, I would never have guessed, admitted or otherwise thought that I would nurse my daughter for 27 months.  But I have learned that it is a journey; one that you take a day (sometimes an hour) at a time.  There is no real need to look forward; they will only be a day older tomorrow.  I am already looking forward to the journey I will take with our next child.  Perhaps it will be longer, I hope not too much shorter, but I’m sure it will be filled with snuggles, precious moments, times of frustration and exhaustion, funny stories and above all, it will all be worth it in the end.

Big girl!

Jayme is a former elementary music teacher and now stay-at-home mom.  She lives with her husband and daughter and is expecting another little blessing around Christmas.  She loves exploring natural living, attachment parenting and all things early childhood.  When she’s not playing with her two year old, she occasionally finds time to work on her child and family photography business, Jayme Lynn Photography.

 

Bittersweet

This post originally ran on November 8, 2010 on Waking Up Singing. Thank you to Megan for sharing this beautiful story with us.

Every single day for the past 6 years and 3 months, I have had the great privelege of nurturing a life with my body, either through pregnancy or breastfeeding or both at the same time. Every day. For more than 6 years. Until now. Maybe.

I’ve always joked that I don’t know how to wean without getting pregnant again – Iain weaned at 16 months when I was 3 months pregnant with Ruby, and Ruby weaned at 18 months when I was 3 months pregnant with Josie. Both times it happened very naturally, with just a little bit of distracting from me – but in general they both just lost interest, and I assumed it had a lot to do with my milk supply because of the pregnancies.

So I knew it would be a different story with baby #3, because clearly I am NOT getting pregnant again. Throw into the mix some major life changes (moving!), and not long ago I had a 16-month-old who was nursing every 2 hours. AROUND THE CLOCK. After we were more or less settled into the new house I night-weaned her, and everyone was a little happier. And over the past 3 months, I’ve slowly been working to cut down on our “deedees”. I placed limits on where (only on the couch), later on when (only after wakings), all the while wondering deep down if it was the right thing to do. I have always followed the “don’t offer, don’t refuse” policy before, but this time I was outright refusing some of her requests to nurse. She seemed to understand though, and I took comfort in knowing that she is old enough to talk about it with me. In the past 2 weeks we’ve started to cut out the after-nap nursing, and I’ve been able to find a tasty snack to keep her happy instead (the first two days it was cookies, but we won’t go into that).

Fast forward to two days ago. I have not been feeling well lately, and have been working a LOT so I am very low on sleep. Because of my little early bird, I have not slept past 6 a.m. in MONTHS. So yesterday John insisted that I sleep in, and he would get up with Josie. Yes, there was some crying (from her, not me – I snored away until 9 a.m.!), but then there was some snuggling with Daddy and the eating of 3 bowls of cereal. Everyone survived.

This morning I went in to get her at 5 (damn you, Daylight Savings Time!) and she said her usual, “OK, Mommy. Hi, Mommy.” But then, instead of patting my chest and saying “More deedees please” over and over again on our way downstairs, she asked for a “snack”.

Slightly shocked, I skipped our usual stumble to the couch and headed straight for the kitchen, where she proceeded to happily sit and eat 2 bowls of cereal. And now here she is, snuggled contentedly into my lap, not asking to nurse, while I write about our apparent weaned status. All this before 6 a.m. Weird.

Deep, deep down, I am sad. This time is gone forever – literally, the end of an era. This little bit of freedom from my own body is also a sign of other freedoms to come – freedoms that sound so good to me now, but that I know I will mourn profoundly in the future. Yes, we seemed to have passed the point where the children physically take of my body in some way, but we are still so very connected in the physical sense. Holding, carrying, snuggling, hugging, rocking, dancing, pulling, lifting… these are physical days, in the most primal way.

Some day, I will clean the bathroom without having a baby strapped on me. Some day, I will sit down to drink my coffee without balancing one, maybe two kids on my knees. Some day, I will cook dinner and listen to music without shrieking demands for repeated dances to “Hammer” (If I Had a Hammer by Peter Paul and Mary). Some day, I will sit on the floor to fold laundry without two kids in my lap and another draped across my shoulders.

And while this body will be floating footloose and fancy free through the house, this mind will be wishing for the days of being weighed down. I will be remembering that even though I had to clean the bathroom with a baby strapped in the sling, she would wriggle her little arms inside the sling and wrap them around my waist in the most heartbreakingly snuggly way, her head resting on my chest. I will remember that even though I longed to drink my coffee and read my magazine in silence, that I couldn’t ever help but giggle at the babbles and drawings and squeaky singing of those knee-balanced children. I will remember that I used to be surrounded by an adoring crowd while I cooked dinner, a crowd that I’m sure will soon turn their adoration toward the TV and computer games and Legos instead. I will remember that even though I didn’t get much laundry folded on the floor, that in fact most of it ended back out of the basket and flung across the floor and pulled messily onto little heads… it was at those times that I was most often struck breathless with my children’s perfect beauty, staring at those faces close-up as they pulled clean socks onto their hands, taking in their hot breath as they leaned on my shoulders, drinking in the very essence of their miracles.

So Josie Jones, if this is it for us – well, then thanks. I couldn’t think of a better person to spend the last 19 1/2 months snuggled on the couch with. And if it’s not, well, then I’ll meet you back on the couch bright and early tomorrow morning.