I'm about to have my twins and have a question about breastfeeding. Were you able to exclusively breastfeed yours, or did you have to supplement with formula?

I'm on a twins message board and it seems like everyone is supplementing. I'm not of the mindset that formula is evil, but would prefer to not use it if I don't have to. I never needed to use it with my first and hadn't planned on it with these babies.

What was your experience like?

No twins, but you should definitely PM Megs. Her twins wouldn't even touch a bottle.

I exclusively nursed the boys with only occasional supplementing with bm in a bottle before I got comfortable NIPing. The boys gained weight just fine, met all their milestones.

I had way too much milk actually. I had to pump just to relieve the pressure when they just had too much eat and couldn't help mommy out.

You can definitely do it!

If mine don't take bottles I will die! They will be in daycare so I really need them to take a bottle of EBM.

My first wouldn't touch one, so I'm really freaked out about that. She was in daycare also and would starve herself all day. I spent my lunch hour for an entire year going to her daycare and nursing her. However, I'm a teacher now and can't leave during the day.

Juni, it's good to hear a success story. My initial goal with these two is one year. After that, we'll see.

Mine are exclusively breastfed. They had some extra calorie formula in the hospital b/c they came out early with some blood sugar issues, but since then only boobmilk. Are you on Twinstuff?

I've been posting on the twinsmagazine website. It's not that great of a site, but still helpful to hear what others are going through. Do you post on twinstuff? How is it?

Oh. I lurked on Twinsmagazine. I did post a little on twinstuff, but mostly just read there a lot while I was on hospital bedrest. They have a good breastfeeding forum there, though, and a ton more traffic than twinsmagazine.

I bought the book Mothering Multiples: Breastfeeding & Caring For Twins Or More by Karen Kerkhoff Gromada from the La Leche League website and its super helpful.

Mine wouldn't touch bottles because we weren't good about introducing them, I'm sure. But still -- no supplementing here and we nursed for 13 and 15 months (Sam self-weaned at 13mo and I just did the don't offer/don't refuse with MB starting around 14ish mo). It wasn't nearly as difficult as I'd imagined and the people at twinstuff and other places really have no idea what they're talking about

See I was hoping that they were all just uneducated about it.

Megs, I think my issue with my daughter was that I didn't do a good job of introducing bottles either. I just don't want to go through that again. It was too stressful trying to work and knowing that she was hungry. That also caused her to reverse cycle which meant that she woke 4-5 times per night to eat.

I had planned to breastfeed, but my twins were born at 34 weeks and ended up in the NICU. Their doctor started them on formula before my milk even came in (without asking me, though at that point I probably would have done anything he recommended because I was scared). By the time they came home, they still had difficulty even taking a bottle, and never did learn to latch on to breastfeed. I pumped for 2 1/2 months until my milk supply dried up, and mixed the milk with formula so that I had enough to feed them.

The lactation consultant at the hospital wasn't much help.

If you have already nursed one child, though, you already know what to expect, and will probably do a lot better than I did. I'm going to guess that a lot of the women who are supplementing either (a) have preemies, or (b) are first-time moms who have never breastfed a baby before.

Mine were 34 weekers as well but I'd nursed one before so I sort of knew what I was in for. I also knew it was our fastest ticket out of the NICU, which it totally was.

I weaned the twins about 4 and 6 weeks ago because they had really lost interest.

I did do some supplementing, but not until about 6 months or so. It wasn't because I wasn't making enough, it was because I'm a lousy pumper and I had to leave them with their dad or babysitters.

Well, I'm already having to supplement with some formula. Both babies were not gaining sufficiently and I just wasn't able to pump enough breastmilk to top them off. Thankfully, they are now gaining a little weight and my supply is increasing.

Breastfeeding twins is absolutely the hardest thing I've ever done. If I hadn't already nursed one, there is no way I'd still be doing it. Luckily, I know that it does get better.

Once we get my son's latch issues resolved, we'll move on to mastering tandem nursing. I know that will make a huge difference.

You can do it, K. You have one of the strongest resolves of people I've "met." And you're always welcome to PM me. As a LC, I've only helped one person with multiples, but she had triplets, not twins.

Dallas how are things going?

And may I say those are some GORGEOUS babies.

We're doing great!

I really didn't think I was going to make it for awhile. This is absolutely the hardest thing I've ever done! I'm starting to get the hang of tandem nursing but really prefer to nurse them individually. We'll see how it goes when they get bigger. I wish that I could manage to tandem nurse them at night so that I'd get some extra sleep, but I just can't handle it when I'm that sleepy.

They are both nursing like champs and are gaining really well. As of last week (6 weeks old) they weighed 10 lbs. each. It's awesome watching them turn into chubbs.

I'm so glad that I stuck with it and feel like we've really turned the corner. Our next challenge will be my returning to work in 7 weeks.

Thanks for checking in on me! I REALLY need the support.

I'm glad that it's going so well! :

Yay! Good for you! I never did really get the hang of bfing with my twins, so you go girl!

And they are totally adorable, too.

I have no idea why the drink you water smilie is in my post.

Weehee! That's awesome news dallas.

Oh and the way I got sleep, was co-sleeping with them. I would just let them pop on the breast and fall asleep. When the other one woke up, I would just switch sides (so both boobs would get used).

I also used the ez2nurse pillow to tandem nurse them while resting my eyes. However, that one was probably somewhat unsafe (i was only 20 and sleep deprived).