Hello and breastfeeding question

For the record "well it didn't work too well for me" ;-)

I had to check the post and make sure you were not my husband! We had the
same experience only ours were a week older. They tried but never latched
on very well and were very lazy not wanting to suck. They more screamed at
the breast then ate. I must say the hospital I was at was very supportive
of me trying to BF the twins, which I more often hear just the opposite.
Even some of the "professionals" tend to discourage mothers of mulitples
from breastfeeding. Plus I was not producing enough for one let alone two.
I even went on some medication that is for some other purpose but one of the
side effects is increased production. Did not help me any at all. After
about the 1st two weeks of them getting food, I was more supplementing the
formula then the other way around. After the kids came home from the
hospital (30 days later) I gave up even trying to bf but continued to pump
for a couple of months. By then I was getting about 5 oz at a time, my
supply dried up really quick, and I finally gave up even trying.

So its not always possible but if you want to, go for it. Find supportive
people (such as a lactation consultant which our hospital had free of
charge) because that will make all the difference. I know I would not have
hung in there for as long as I did without the support.

If it doesn't work out, at least you know you tried your best!

- Erica


"Digital Larry" wrote in message
.11...
Our boys never really got the hang of it. Born at 32 wks 5 d, they were
tube, then bottle fed in NICU for several weeks, no doubt that contributed
to the problem. DW did try repeatedly to BF in NICU with very limited
success. Also no experience as these are our first. Another problem was
that DW's nipples grew to about 5 times their normal size and preemie kids
had very hard time latching on as their mouths were pretty small. For the
record we did not make that excuse up, the doctor did.

I was not much help. I don't read too much about people who have NOT had
great success with BF, I think there is a great stigma associated with
this "failure" and few women are willing to get up in a public forum like
this and say "well it didn't work too well for me". I checked all the
responses so far and nobody said anything other than: it was hard but it
ultimately worked.

My wife felt terrible about it but was able to pump and get a little bit
less until 12 weeks where the amount she was getting was only about 5% of
their total intake. This stress combined with general exhaustion (we do
not have extensive network of able bodied in laws to take care of
everything - just us two trying to handle everything). When you put the
kid to the breast and he screams bloody murder and thrashes for 15
minutes,
then when you give him a bottle he is just ducky... how many times is the
average person going to repeat that scene?

Today she talked with a good friend who did NOT have twins, their son was
NOT premature, and had much the same issues and gave up after 3.5 months.

OB/GYN and Ped. were both supportive in the "do what you can do" and
"don't
feel guilty" sort of way. I am just here to say that you may have an
immensely difficult time, esp. if you do not have successful BF experience
already and/or the active, ongoing support of other people with experience
or perhaps even a professional lactation consultant.

This may turn out to be a very unpopular point of view. I wish you the
best of luck.

Larry ) wrote:

Another problem was
that DW's nipples grew to about 5 times their normal size and preemie kids
had very hard time latching on as their mouths were pretty small. For the
record we did not make that excuse up, the doctor did.

One thing that your post made me think of, though it is rather different from
what you were actually talking about, is that many women's areolas (the
pigmented area around the nipple) are quite large or get much larger during
pregnancy. Some books/consultants will actually say that the baby needs to be
getting all of the areola in its mouth. Well, sorry, that's not possible if the
areola is the size of a pancake! What is actually meant is that the baby must
be getting a significant quantity of areola on each side of the nipple, and not
be sucking just at the tip of the nipple.

My original goal was six weeks, and there were times I didn't think I would
make it. By six weeks I felt entirely differently about it and as though we had
only just started, but if things had not worked out, I was prepared to switch
to formula without a qualm. If you know you've done the best you could under
the circumstances you were given, there is no sense in feeling guilty. I think
it's undoubtedly true that any amount of breastmilk is worth giving them,
especially for premies, and the benefits are the greatest in the beginning.

I do think many breastfeeding difficulties (speaking in general here, now, not
so much specific twin-related or premie-related stuff) stem from lack of
knowledge in the general population and lack of support for families with new
babies in general. It isn't even so much that people need to know specific
facts, it's that it would be so much more comfortable and easy to breastfeed if
it were just generally accepted that that was what one did, and everyone had
grown up seeing women do it. Just as it's easier to have confidence in learning
to cook if you've grown up watching folks cut up onions and such.

--Helen

On Fri, 01 Aug 2003 16:26:04 GMT, "C Straka"
wrote:

[...]

I should also say that this NG has always been amazingly supportive about
the different choices that parents make - completely unlike every other
parent-related NG I have ever visited.


Shhh!! That's supposed to be a secret! ;-)

Nick

--
Nick Theodorakis

All the views on breastfeeding are helpful, successful or not and its
certainly prompting a list of questions to make sure I ask the OB what the
feeding regime is at the hospital if they are premature.

As for a lactation consultant ......... I've been a nurse for 16 years and
never worked in a hospital that's had one. If you are lucky in the UK you
get a midwife who's made it her mission to promote breastfeeding!

Thanks to everyone for their advice, we actually start twin parentcraft
classes on Monday (we were amazed they had those!) so it should be
interesting what info they can give )) ..... Wonder if anybody taking the
classes has had twins - oh I'm such a cynic!

Ellie

(26 weeks and counting)

Since there were so many good responses I'll just respond to my own post
here.

We were certainly warned about the possibility of nipple confusion by NICU
staff. They were supportive of BF attempts, but for it to have really
worked better DW would have had to have been there nearly constantly, and
definitely when they were trying to make the transition from the tube. We
live 15 miles from the hospital - I guess we could have rented a motel room
or apt. for that time to make it easier to get there. As it was we made
every effort to visit twice a day for the entire stretch - though sometimes
it was me just delivering some pumped milk.

I suppose that we could have insisted that the kids remain on tube feeding
until the point they were well enough to go home, but I'm not sure they
would have done that since they go out of their way to get them "nippling".
Also, the sight of the kids batting/pulling at the feeding tubes and tape
on their faces was so disturbing that I wanted to get them off THAT ASAP.
We did not influence what happened with that however. I did find the tube
more bothersome than all the wires they had attached to them.

Lactation consultant at hospital basically breezed in to maternity
recovery suite a couple times, gave a few general purpose pointers and gave
us some plastic bags that can be placed in the microwave to sterilize
bottle stuff. It just was not enough and not at the right time since we
were not even WITH the kids when she visited. She did not visit the NICU
while we were there... and since parents' presence in NICU is not scheduled
I do not see why she WOULD go there. It might have helped to have a very
specific focus at the point of transition as I said before.

I could tell that DW was getting discouraged after the kids came home -
she'd say things like "he doesn't seem to be in the mood to BF", though she
tried off and on maybe a dozen times with about zero success. Just about
anything I could have said at this point probably would have been the wrong
thing, because I was not personally experiencing the problem, nor did I
have any valid perspective other than "well I think BF is better". Also
one of the boys has pretty bad reflux, it seems a shame to take that
valuable liquid and watch it go flying all over the bib and blankets.
There again, every little bit helps though right? No simple answers.

I'm thinking in retrospect, what could/would we have done differently?
I really don't know. One poster had some other suggestions which I did not
fully understand, but those might be worth pursuing.

Thanks for the many thoughtful responses.

My twins didn't really nurse effectively for the first 4 to 6 months.
They were getting a combination of expressed breast milk and formula.
But eventually they got better at nursing and more interested in it, and
they ended up nursing until about 30 months.

I don't know if my wife would have stuck with the pumping if we hadn't
had full-time help. (Although "full-time" is only 40 hours/week, which
is still a pretty small fraction of the hours in the week!)

David desJardins