Nursing twins -- supplementing

Effect on milk supply: If you have a singleton, I'd always advise against supplementing with formula except in cases when the doctor has told you to, and even then I'd use a cup. The theory is that supplementing with formula will lessen your milk supply. While I expect this applies to nursing twins as well, realistically you're nursing your twins so much (the demand is so great) that a little off-site supply probably won't affect your supply. It's something you want to limit, but if it helps you stay sane, do what you need to do.


I also knew moms from my MOT club who half-nursed. For each feed, one baby was nursed and one was fed formula. At the next feed, the babies would switch. It's not something I wanted to do (to me it sounds tougher than doing one or the other), but you should know that it's an option that worked for some people.


As for me, I've already mentioned that when we first came home from the hospital, the doctor wanted us to supplement with formula. I'd feed a baby and then hand him/her off to be fed an ounce of formula from a little cup of formula. Looking back on my feeding log, the first time we did this was when the kids were 7 days old and they'd generally take only about 1/4 ounce. It looks like they stopped taking any by the time they were 10 days old, so this only happened for a short time. My journal at 20 days old says "Dr. X was pretty impressed that they're being breastfed exclusively."


That didn't last that long, though. When they were 5 weeks and 2 days old, I wrote, "They are gaining good weight, but driving me crazy wanting to eat all the time. I'm not sure I have enough milk for them." I was constantly second-guessing myself; I should have said if they're gaining, I have enough milk. Bygones. In any case, at this point I decided that the final feed of the evening would be a formula feed, then we'd put the babies to bed and I'd pump so I'd have milk for other times.


Was that the right thing to do? I don't know. It seemed like a good solution at the time. It gave me a break from providing 100% of the nutrition for two babies. By the end of the day, I often felt like I couldn't possibly have anything left. It was another case of "doing what works for you" and it alleviated some of my second-guessing. It also brought in more gassiness and spitting up, and I eventually changed one of the kids to a different formula for that one feed.


A journal excerpt at three months and two days: "We're working on bedtime -- they don't get a million ounces of formula a night, nor do they get to come back downstairs to be fed more at the drop of a hat. K is getting the hang of it better, but hopefully we'll get it to work out entirely soon!" I'm kind of embarrassed at how pathetic we were at this. In our defense, it was 11 years ago and there weren't as many great sources of information on the internet at the time. Let "we can do better than they did" be your mantra.


Around that same time frame, I was realizing that we had a lot of pumped milk in the freezer, and I didn't go out that often, so we started alternating that last feed of the day when possible -- pumped milk for one baby, formula for the other.


By three months and 15 days, we started alternating the last feed of the day in a different way -- a bottle of pumped milk or formula for one baby, breastfeeding for the other.  We went on for a long time like that. It was nice to be able to give a baby two breasts. Eventually (I'm not even sure when but it was after I started feeding solids at about 7 months), the nursed baby was happy enough with one breast and the bottle baby started taking less, so I just nursed, one child to each breast, for that final feed.


If all that wordiness tells you anything, it's that you may try a lot of things to find something that works for your family. I would have love to have avoided formula entirely (as I was able to do for my subsequent singleton), but supplementing for this final feed of the day helped me avoid the stress I was feeling, being the sole source of nutrition for two other lives.