To tandem or not?

Hi All,

I am new to this site and new to being a mom! We had twins February 11th, fraternal son and daughter. I would desperately love to tandem feed them but so far can only seem to manage this when I have help (which is only in the evenings & night time). I have been doing lots of research and found a great video on you tube but the woman on there made it look so easy with her 4 month old twins! I have the My Brest Friend twin nursing pillow which helps but I still can't seem to manage to feel comfortable with them both on the pillow at the same time. Severe fear of one of them falling off, especially because they both seem to need to be burped mid way through nursing. The other problem is they have different sleep patterns so most advice I have read recommends waking one up when the other wakes to feed them both however when we have tried this it doesn't always work for the twin that had to be woken...they just don't seem hungry yet so only nurse for 4 or 5 minutes Because of all of this we also don't have them on much of a schedule! Especially because if one or both sleep longer 4 or even 5 hours (usual is 3 hours between nursing times) we kind of want them to so we can get sleep or other things done! Geez, writing all this just makes me realize what a mess we are!
Not tandem feeding is leading to a serious lack of sleep for both DH and I....any advice you could give would be so greatly appreciated!

 

Hi,
I am also new to the twin mommy club! Our identical twin girls were born Feb. 20th. I don't have a lot of experience with tandem feeding, but have done it a little bit. When I do tandem feed I use a twin z pillow (like a double boppy pillow) and do the football hold. I have also fed without the pillow and then do 1 girl football hold and 1 cradle hold. That has seemed to work best. We give bottles of breastmilk at night because they need powder added to the milk 2-3 times per day and also because breastfeeding still takes them so long. Don't know if that helps at all, but hopefully it does. I hope you are able to get more sleep than we are getting!

 

Congratulations on your twins and welcome to this site! You have come to the right place for answers to any and all of your questions!

My twins turned 7 in January, so it's been awhile since I nursed. I'll try to share what I remember worked for us. I did nurse them until they were a few months past two years old.

I started tandem nursing with their very first feeding in the hospital. It was the only way I nursed them. The pillow I used was the EZ2 Nurse pillow and I had one at my house and my mom's house. When my babies were little, like yours still are, I had to have a hand towel folded up to place under their heads so they fit better. I always used the little pillow behind me to get me in better position.

I was definately one of those moms that fed them both on the same schedule. My husband was away and I also had a 16 month old and felt it was the only way I would survive. One of my boys, Nathan, almost always had to be awakened for a night feeding. His brother was up like clockwork every 3 hours, but Nathan had to be awakened. If they had trouble staying awake for a full feeding, I would keep waking them until I felt they had nursed long enough to fill their tummy. It may not have been as long as a day time feeding, but enough. I used cold wash clothes gently on their faces to keep them awake. Sometimes it seemed like I was spending a lot of effort keeping them awake, but it was worth it in the long run.

Getting both babies into position took some getting used to. I bet you can do it with a little practice and confidence. The first thing I made sure of was that I had everything I needed on the couch, and I mean everything: burp clothe, TV remote, book, big pillow and little pillow, phone, etc. Then I would bring both babies to the couch and lay one down and sit down with the other. I arranged the pillow the way I needed to and got one baby in place. Then I reached over and got the other baby, with two hands, and put him in place. Once I was more comfortable, I was able to scoop the second baby up with one hand, but I'd wait to do that until you feel able to try (then they get too big and I had to go back to two hands!) I had to be careful when doing this, because sometimes I was reaching over the top of the first baby and if my breasts were exposed, even a little, he'd latch on before I was ready and it was a little surprising and sometimes a little uncomfortable to me. The babies never seemed to mind though! Anyway, once I had both babies in place, I could lift my shirt and get them latched on. If a baby needed to be burped in the middle of the nursing session, I just sat him up and burped him off the side of the pillow, or when they were little enough, I could put him on my shoulder and burp him while his brother was still nursing.

I won't lie, I did have times where nothing seemed to go right. One baby would latch, the other was fussy. I'd burp one baby and the other would unlatch and fuss. There are just so many ways things could go wrong! Honestly, when nothing seemed to go right, I would just laugh and tell myself it has to get better. I really did that. :laughing: I had to force it at times, but I did it or else I think I would have lost my mind.

Keep at it and use a lactation consultant if you have one. I had a great one, but she had no experience with twins. She was able to help me with latching issues and emotional support for what I was trying to do. Once I had the latching down, it was much easier to get them both on without any help.

Good luck!

 

I never tandem fed much. I have an overactive letdown so I had to help the girls out a bit for the first several weeks. When I did try to tandem feed they were easily distracted by each other and didn't eat as much. So I feed mostly on demand. We co-slept (using an arms reach cosleeper) for the first 3.5 months, which helped tremendously, and my girls are guzzlers anyway. After the first couple weeks I decided waking one when the other did just didn't work for us. At best my girls have always had staggered schedules.

It's what worked best for us. And one unexpected benefit was that I get one on one time with each girl no matter how crazy things get. Then I just have to squeeze in special time for my oldest.

 

It has been a long time for me as well, I nursed my girls for over a year and did not tandem nurse. The few times I did try, one girl was not really ready to eat so had to eat sooner than if I had just waited and fed on demand.

 

I started tandem nursing in the hospital and never looked back. I didn't like really doing it by myself, either, so at night it was my husband's job to be the baby ferry. I got comfy with everything I needed and he passed me changed kids ready to eat. I think what we did was unswaddle the sleeping baby first to start him waking up. Then he'd change the squalling baby- almost always my smaller boy and get him to me. Then he'd go back to my big baby, change and wake him up a bit. We also used washcloths and rubbing a his shoulders to keep him up at least 10 minutes.

We had the EZ2Nurse pillow, too, which was angled toward me, so the babies couldn't roll off/uphill. If they did roll try ran into me.

 

I wasn't into tandem nursing when they were that little either. At night I have vague and exhausted memories of keeping them both in bed with me and just switching sides to who ever was crying. Sometimes they spent the night in the crib and sometimes not. It sucks, it really does, but it will get easier before you know it. Also, if you can in any way afford it, I highly recommend getting a night nurse for a couple of nights a week. We had our nurse as a community gift for 7 weekends and just being able to look forward to the weekend made things easier.

 

First of all - congratulations of your babies and welcome to TS!

As long as you are still getting used to positioning I would recommend tandem-nursing on the big bed - lots of pillows and space, no fear of a baby falling down even if he or she rolls off the nursing pillow, and if they drift off to sleep you can let them sleep and either ease away or have a nap yourself. What I did was to have a supply of everything (burp cloths, diapers, drink and snack for me, phone, book etc.) on my bedside table, position several pillows in my back and under my knees as long as they were small to tilt the double nursing pillow slightly toward me, have additional towels or small cushions to put under their heads as long as they were small and then get the babies and first place them both on the pillow and then latch them one after the other. I usually latched my better nurser first because he would not lose his latch if I needed both hands to latch his twin. I mostly tandem nursed with both in the football hold or with one in football and one in cradle hold.

With regard to rhythm: They are still tiny babies and for us the rhythms were only slowly starting to develop around that age.

 

Wow, thanks everyone for your responses! I have tried tandem feeding them on my bed a little because I feel safe there. If they roll at least it will be onto the bed! I guess my biggest worry is still how to burp them in the middle of feeding and then after they are done how do you settle them both and get them both back to sleep after a bit of kick/play time? Ive tried to burp them off the side of my twin pillow but worry about the other that is still trying to nurse. It usually causes that baby to come off and fuss.
I feel encouraged to read that lots of you never fed tandem and still managed though. I guess I was starting to feel like the only one who couldnt figure this out! If nothing else maybe we will tandem feed them in the night when I have hubbies help and during the day I will let them feed on demand to make it easier for me.
I am so glad I discovered this site and have other moms to talk to who can relate to what I am going through!
:thanks:

 

Ditto! I did nurse them seperately a lot until they learned how to crawl. Then if one was hungy and I started to feed, the other would crawl over to me and insist on lunch as well.

 

I did a mixture of tandem and individual feeding. Early on, my smaller one needed a nipple shield and some extra help latching, so I started out doing them individually. In those early days, I would feed him, pass him to daddy to burp and settle him, and then go wake his sister and have her feed too. When they were about 2 months, I started tandem feeding them. This is exactly what I did:

If I was by myself, I would put them on the bed in a boppy or in their bouncy seat next to the couch until I was situated, then bring them onto the pillow. I also found it easier to scoop them up one handed if they were still swaddled before I started. When I tandem fed, they never seemed to stay asleep and settled when I finished, so I reserved tandem feeding for daytime feeds and bedtime. In the middle of the night, I still fed individually. This also helped because around 6-8 weeks my bigger baby decided to sleep 5-6 hour stretches where my little one still needed every 2-3 hour feedings. I felt like everyone got more sleep if I just nursed and settled the baby who woke back to bed and slept until the next wake up. During the day I always woke a sleeping baby to nurse, but my babies didn't really nap well so usually they were up! By 2-3 months they were pretty much looking for feedings at the same time during the day, so tandem feeding worked to actually give us some play time before it was time to try to get them to sleep again. Just keep practicing and you will find the routine that works best for you!

 

I definitely felt like a mess at first too, but at the five month mark and looking back, I realize that the first months are crazy: you are learning and they are learning and everyone is making up the routines from scratch. I don't have anything new to offer, except to say you are doing everything right: trying to figure out the best systems, troubleshooting, asking for help, and moving on when things don't work.