Breastfeeding twins - when it doesn't go according to plan

It's Twins & Multiples week this week. Yesterday we heard from Harriet who successfully managed to breastfeed her twins. And she gave us some great tips.

Today we hear from Jenny Rudd - you can read her blog here -a mum who tried to breastfeed her twins - but didn't find it quite as easy. Not surprising, giving the challenges she faced. But we wanted to share her story so that any other mums of twins who may have tried to breastfeed and not managed, can take heart from her positive point of view.

Thanks for sharing your story Jenny.

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I always knew it was going to be a bit of a mission breastfeeding twins but I was keen to do it.  Like many, mine were born prematurely (5 weeks) and I wanted to give them the best start possible.  I had struggled to breastfeed my son two years earlier and gave up after 10 days when he coughed up the blood he had ingested from my shredded nipples.

Both twins were fitted with feeding tubes and taken to the Special Care Baby Unit when they were born.  There was no panic, it was just routine for premature babies.  Twin2 was in an incubator for the first night but I could take them out and cuddle them and feed them as much as I liked after that. 

I checked out of hospital a few hours after their birth and moved into one of the bedrooms in the Special Care Unit.  My husband was at home looking after our son so I felt like I had the best chance possible to get to grips with breastfeeding.  The special care unit was set up in the most supportive fashion possible.  Lazy Boy chairs were everywhere and I had a nurse assigned to me 24 hours a day.

The twins went on a 4 hourly feeding schedule within a day or two.  I became merely an appendage to my boobs.  If the twins weren't draining them of milk, they were being sucked dry by the ker-thump of the industrial sized breast pump.  The twins were only really capable of feeding for 20 minutes or so when they were first born.  They would then be topped them up through the feeding tube with either my own expressed milk or formula.  After this, I would then pump for a further 15 minutes for each breast to stimulate production at the advice of the nurses.

Even with the unbelievable help in hospital, complete quiet and calm atmosphere and access to a wide range of breastfeeding pillows, nipple shields and comfy chairs, I struggled again with breast feeding.  My right arm is paralysed which didn't help the process.  I worried about my boobs flopping around in public while my left arm scrabbled to preserve the last scraps of modesty which remain after childbirth.

The girls stayed in hospital for ten days.  The first feed when I got home was a disaster.  My son was keen to climb up and cuddle the babies and I found it hard to deal with the three of them while my good arm was taken up with nursing.  I was struggling to bond with the babies.  I decided to change to formula.  As you would expect, I was confronted with lots of well meaning but damaging tut-tutting and raised eyebrows.  I was concerned that the babies were too tiny and premature to be fed formula but my ability to cope with them and my son improved greatly once I started to bottle feed them.  The first year or so of babies is often about just battling through.

I would have loved to breastfeed for longer but I felt that, looking at the whole picture for our family, bottle feeding was best.  I love looking at women blithely carrying on about their day with a child plugged in.  I love seeing the effortlessness of their feeding endeavours.  I'm not particularly anti or pro anything when it comes to raising babies.  There are two options for feeding - bottle or breast, but there are infinite combinations of baby and child rearing techniques, of which, feeding is just one aspect.  Whatever you do, as long as you do it with love, that's the best course of action.

My twins are 2 and a half and my son is 4 and a half now.  I would say it probably took my husband and I until the girls were about 20 months old to properly bond with them.  It was just such a battle to get through each day for a long time, I barely had the mental or emotional space for anything other than the routine of child care.  Cheesy though it may sound though, I hug myself with glee these days when I look at my three screaming and shreaking round the garden, robust and healthy and happy.

If you'd like to read more about the reality of screaming and shreaking, have a look at my blog http://jennyjanerudd.blogspot.com

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At Emma-Jane we're all about comfort and support - whether that's with our nursing bras or just being able to share breastfeeding tales amongst new mums. So if you have a story you'd like to share with us, please leave us a comment below.