I talked about how my milk took longer than usual to come in due to some complications after delivery in this post. Since my milk wasn't around to feed my babies, they had to spend some time in the NICU. It turned out to be quite the job for my milk to eventually come in. Then I had the added challenge to get my supply up enough to feed two babies.
Getting my milk to come in and my supply to increase required a lot of pumping. I really, really hate pumping. For those of you who don't know, pumping involves hooking an electric pump up to your boobs and sitting around while it pumps milk from your boobs. While it's not super painful for me, it's not very pleasant. Plus I feel like I am tethered to the couch and can only go as far as the plastic tubing will allow me to go. After I delivered my babies, it was recommended that I pump every 4 hours. While Adam tried to help me make that happen, it just didn't. I was exhausted and pumping wasn't high on my priority list. But eventually I was able to pump more and more and my milk did come in.
Once my milk was in, I was able to try to breastfeed my babies while they were in the NICU. I envisioned breastfeeding to be this wonderful bonding experience between me and my babies. I thought we would stare adoringly at each other and things would go smoothly. But that's not exactly how things went.
Since my babies were born prematurely, they struggled to latch, maintain a strong suck and stay awake long enough to get enough to eat. So breastfeeding was quite the challenge in the beginning. Archer got the hang of latching pretty quickly, but Lyla struggled a long time. She would turn her head back and forth with her mouth open like a crazy person. It was so frustrating! Even if I would shove my nipple in her mouth, sometimes she still wouldn't latch on. We both wanted the same thing, but somehow couldn't make it happen. The occupational therapist that worked with us suggested we give her chin a little pressure. So I would try to be squeezing my boob to get the milk going and then pushing up on her chin and trying to hold her head in place. Man, what I wouldn't have given for another hand!
After all that work, sometimes she would only nurse for a few minutes and then fall asleep. It was exhausting! Archer managed to latch quicker, but he would fall asleep as well. I would have to tickle them and jiggle them a little to keep them awake.
After they got to be a few days older, then I started having the opposite problem. They would want to nurse for up to an hour for each feeding! The NICU staff told us the optimal feeding time was 30 minutes, so it was frustrating for the babies when I would cut them off. Apparently nursing for too long used up too many calories. And the babies needed to maintain as many calories as possible to gain weight. Of course they would just cry if they were still hungry. Eventually I just started nursing them longer until they were satisfied even though I wasn't technically supposed to do that. I felt like crying and crying because they were still hungry would burn up calories too. If I fed them longer, at least they would be happy. But then that meant the time in between feedings became shorter and shorter.
Then after I fed each baby, I would have to pump. The purpose of pumping after they ate was to increase my milk supply. So it kinda felt like I had three babies to feed. I was not as enthused about breastfeeding at this point. But I continued on because I felt like it was the best thing for my babies.
When we got to leave the NICU, I thought things would be simpler because I could nurse the babies whenever they were hungry instead of trying to keep up with a schedule. But I was wrong. Nursing them whenever they were hungry meant I was nursing ALL THE TIME! And then I tried to keep up with pumping after each feeding. It was exhausting!
So then I decided to give tandem feeding a try. Tandem feeding is when you have one baby on each boob at the same time. I had a nursing pillow to help position the babies. It would strap around my waist and the babies would lay on top of it. There was no way I could do this on my own. So someone would have to bring me the babies, burp them when they needed, change their diaper and then take them away. This meant that whoever was helping me (or even just whoever else was in the same room) got up close and personal with me and my boobs. I've always been a very modest person. Heck, I don't even like to wear shirts that are too low-cut! But that modesty went out the window! I would whip off my shirt and pull out my boobs. Never in a million years would I have dreamed my mother-in-law would see my boobs on a regular basis! But that's just how it is now.
With tandem feeding, I was pretty much stuck in that position for at least an hour, sometimes more depending on how hungry each baby was during that feeding. I hated it. It was a struggle to get both latched and keep them latched. I felt trapped by that pillow and having to stay in that position. My hormones were still in full swing and I would have hot flashes, so having a giant pillow and two babies close to me didn't help make me any cooler. And I just got tired of having two babies attached to me for so long. The babies ate about every 3 hours, so I spent a lot of time just feeding them.
I also felt guilty about hating breastfeeding. You see commercials and pictures where the baby is just calmly nursing and the mom is smiling down. My babies did a lot of screaming and squirming and crying. I did my fair share of crying too. Adam would try to help the babies latch, which was nice of him to try. But that just meant there was one more person in my bubble and it made me super crabby. I'm sure I didn't treat him as kindly as I could have on more than one occasion.
So after giving tandem feeding a valiant effort for about a week, I decided it wasn't worth it. So I decided that I would just nurse one baby at a time. If both Archer and Lyla were hungry at the same time, I would have whoever was around feed them a bottle of breast milk that I had pumped. This lowered the level of stress and dread I had drastically.
I also went to a weekly breastfeeding support group at the hospital where I delivered. It was very helpful to hear other moms talking about their struggles. It helped me to feel like I wasn't alone. At the meetings they also have a scale, so I could weigh my babies to make sure they were making the gains they needed to be making. It's hard to tell exactly how much milk they are getting when breastfeeding, so it was nice to have proof that they were gaining weight each week.
Even though both Archer and Lyla were gaining weight, Lyla seemed to hate eating. It was such an ordeal to nurse her. She took forever to latch, wouldn't stay latched, would scream and cry and took forever to eat. I chalked it up to her being born premature and just needing more time to get the hang of it.
Well, fast forward to her 2 month doctor visit. As our pediatrician was checking her out, she noticed some specks of blood in her stool in her diaper. While I didn't stare at her poopy diapers, I did glance at them from time to time and had never noticed any blood specks. In addition to bloody specks in her poop and difficulty nursing, Lyla was always incredibly unhappy. It seemed like she had three channels: sleeping, eating or screaming. At first we just thought that was her personality. We figured she was just dramatic. But I began to think we were missing something. Surely she can't be unhappy all the time. So after mentioning all these things, the pediatrician put two and two together and determined that Lyla had a dairy allergy. Apparently this is fairly common in babies, especially premature ones. Their gastrointestinal tracks can't break down the proteins found in dairy. This explained why she was always unhappy and hated nursing. She was in pain! Cue the mom guilt! I felt terrible that it took us 8 weeks before we figured out something was wrong with our sweet Lyla.
So the pediatrician told us we should switch her to a dairy-free formula called Nutramigen. In the meantime, if I wanted to continue to breastfeed her, I should eliminate dairy from my diet. That meant no cheese, no yogurt, no chocolate. I'm not gonna lie, I was not very happy about this. But I thought I should do what's best for Lyla. So we took home some formula samples and I vowed to cut dairy from my diet. Well, eating no dairy sucked. The more I thought about it, the more I realized my diet is basically 95% dairy. I decided it would take too much energy for me to figure out what I'm supposed to eat and plan meals and make sure I get enough protein. And I decided my happiness was worth something in this equation.
But, boy did I feel guilty! I felt bad about the prospect of breastfeeding Archer and not Lyla. And I felt bad about putting what I wanted before what Lyla needed. But that all changed after Lyla had her first bottle of formula. She slurped it down and made happy little noises as she was eating. It was the first time she seemed to actually enjoy eating. I decided that she was happy with her formula, so I should be happy about eating what I wanted to eat. After all, fed is best. Both of my babies were being fed and that's all that matters in the end. I kept reminding myself that Lyla did get two whole months of breast milk, so she received many of the benefits of breast milk for a good chunk of time. And who knows? Maybe she'll outgrow her allergy and I can try breastfeeding her again in the future.
So now things have been a bit easier in the breastfeeding department. Nursing one baby is a heck of a lot easier than breastfeeding two! Although now I have a pretty big milk supply since I worked on getting enough milk to feed two babies. So I have been pumping more and freezing what Archer doesn't use in his supplement bottles. I started the process to donate some of my breast milk to the Heart of America Mother's Milk Bank. I'm really excited to be able to pay it forward since my babies received donor milk while they were in the NICU.
Whether moms decide to breastfeed or formula-feed, my hat goes off to you! Feeding babies is hard, but important work. Whatever works best for you and your baby is the right choice. I've got two babies and feed one with breastmilk and one with formula. Both are fed and happy and that makes me happy.
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