How to help get off NG tube feeds

[MSH2010]

My twins were born at 32+3 due to me getting HELLP syndrome
They're currently on the low dependence ward and doing well. But I'm struggling to get them off their tubes 😔
I just want my babies home. They'll be 3 weeks old on Tuesday
T1 I've started introducing breast milk in a bottle
T2 is managed a few minutes at the breast

Congratulations on the birth of your twins! My little one was born recently at 36+3 and had a feeding tube. We managed to get her to do one oral feed for every two tube feeds and then one oral for every one tube before eventually going to just oral feeds. She used to get so sleepy though when feeding orally so I used to change her nappy, strip her down and put the fan on to try and keep her awake!

I started trying to breast feed but wasn't producing enough so she would feed from me for 10mins then have expressed milk/formula in a bottle to top her up as well as having her tube feeds. I felt this was really confusing for her though and I found the constant need to express exhausting and it was making me really sad so we made the decision to just go with formula in a bottle and she did amazingly well after that.

Hope some of that is helpful and good luck with your babies

Congratulations on your babies. My DD was born at 32+5 and started a little bit of breast feeding early on but would fall asleep at a few sucks then between 35 and 36 weeks she just got it. Literally one day she was still having all feeds by tube and within a couple of days she was able to exclusively breastfeed and came home couple of days later. Thats what we were told often happens - one day the baby will just get it and won't need the tube anymore but it is really tough waiting for that.
I used to keep her on the breast while she had her tube feed in the hope that she's associate that with being full. I don't know if it helped but I wanted to try anything.

Hi! Congrats on the birth of you're bundles of joy!!

My son was in NICU for 12 days, we had a traumatic birth and he wasnt fed at all for 5 days then the NICU staff started feeding him through a tube

They advised me to (at every tube feed) to give him a dummy to get their sucking going and associating the milk with the suck if that makes sense

He done well with this and is now 4 weeks old and 10lb 5oz!!

He didn't latch on and would only feed from a bottle so I expressed for a while but gave up and now on formula

But maybe the dummy will help?

Good luck!

Congratulations on your twins! Not sure if you’re on Facebook but there is a very knowledgeable and supportive group on there that you might want to join Breastfeeding Twins and Triplets UK - sign up via breastfeedingtwinsandtriplets.co.uk/ Mine were born at 36 weeks so a different situation to you but I found the posts from other people and the information in the files area really useful even if I didn’t post myself. Good luck with it all!