advice with feeding needed

[lucya1980]

my twins wer term at 38weeks. They are now 7 weeks and have been trying to combine feed for 3 weeks with formula to give myself some sleep and let dh have some time with them But this is not going well. ddt2 is doing really well and has no problem with formula exept after having 6 oz slowly, still has a 20min or so bf after. so the formula doesnt seem to fill her up.dst1 has refused formula and seems to hate anything to do with the bottle. he seemed to take the ebm with a liitle formula mixed in well the first few times, but only when he is really starving and it has been a while since he fed. ( they both cluster bf in the eve and i try and put a bottle in there somewhere.) i am struggling to get him to accept te bottle at all. this makes me feel bad as he is getting the best of the bf, and poor twin 2 is getting the formula, but she is really thriving on it and is progressing faster than her brother on weght etc.He is a very colicy baby, and has had very bad nappy rash since he was about 2 weeks old and had to have abx ( which he hated and it realy upset him so anything that is not my boob in his mouth seems to send him hysterical. also have tried tandem feeding but i have to hold each in opsition with 2 hands and the keep falling off even with the easy2nurse cushion so i decided to feed seperatly but this gives me little rest . i wuold feel bad to exclusivly bf him and give the other formula. (even if its only a few a day) Has any1 else had one bf and one ff twin? how did u cope. how can i get him to accept it? any tips welcome please. also sorry for my major esay!

Hi there, my twins are now 18 months old, but I had a similar situation to you when they were born. I mainly breastfed but wanted to give them 1 bottle of ff each so that I could have a break and let someone else do a feed. However, things didn't go according to plan because, while Elinor had no probs with the fm Olivia was intolerant to fm and so I ended up having to exclusively bf her while Elinor had 2 ff. I felt dreadfully guilty about this at the time but there was nothing I could do because Olivia would either puke back an entire bottle or it would go straight through her. I think you just have to go with each baby's needs at the time. The one that has the ff's is still getting all the benefits of your bm and is thriving so don't beat yourself up about it. Olivia grew out of her fm intolerance at around 6 months so I was able to even the feeds out then, although she has always been the most difficult to feed!!

I also found feeding 2 at once v. difficult. In the end I gave up and fed one at a time even though it took longer. I just found I couldn't juggle feeding both the babies at once as they needed burping quite a bit as they were both quite colicky. I also found feeding 2 at once gave me sore nipples for some reason. So my advice is just to go with whatever feels right & comfortable for you.

Hi Lucy, my dts are 5 months now and had the same problem at first with one accepting a bottle of formula or emb and the other not.
Can I just reassure you it gets so much easier. Dt2 will now take a bottle of quite warm formula at night but interesting not ebm were at dt1 will take anything.

I found tandem feeding difficult at first but sooo much easier now they are bigger they now feed in a v shape down my front,
The thing that kept me going, was knowing that any breast milk is doing them good.

oh and everyone telling me I couldn't do it

Oh Lucya! Don't feel bad. Really, really just do what you can to get you through. One baby doesn't mind and one prefers breastmilk - you said it yourself. Feeding two is hard. I am blessed to have one DT that is huge and sleeps for england so I'm not actually attached to both of them all night and all day. I can completely understand that if even one of them feeds from you less it gives you a big break. You are doing well, keep doing what works and don't feel guilty! x

'Every feed counts' is the mantra you should be telling yourself. Every time you successfully breastfeed eithr of them, that's a great thing.

Don't worry about 'using up' the breastmilk for one baby by giving it to the other. If you then breastfeed afterwards you get another let-down of milk, even 10 mins or so after the first feed! There is always milk in there, it never runs out! Just start them on the breast that was used less in the previous feed.

Any breastmilk is better than none so give yourself a pat o the back!