You Gonna Drink That?

As the twins get older, their nursing habits have been changing quite a bit.

Logan is now far more interested in getting down onto the floor as quickly as possible and playing, while Emma claims the lion's share of milk. Logan is also easily distractable, while Emma latches on like a remora. Nothing and no one can distract her, not even someone trying to change her diaper while she's nursing.

The kid's got focus.

So now, when they nurse together, Emma has been waiting to pounce on Logan's leftovers. So much so that she's not overly interested in waiting anymore. Instead, she lurks; she looms; she hovers; she leans into his nursing space with a pursed mouth and a look in her eye that clearly says:

"You gonna drink dat?"

Meanwhile Logan sips, looks around, sips a little more, checks my teeth, sips, beeps my nose, drink a little more seriously until something goes by in the hallway outside the nursery door. All the while, Emma leans a little farther into his space or makes unhappy noises at him.

"Why aren't you done yet! I'm still hungry! Move! Movemovemove!"

Finally Logan will slide off my lap and go play with books or blocks and Emma will pounce on me. She leans over, throws her hands up in the air and falls onto me and into place.

Happy at last.

Breastfeeding Twins?!

"Are you still breastfeeding?"

Every woman who breastfeeds her children will, without fail, at some point be asked that very pointed question.

"Are you still breastfeeding?"

It almost doesn't matter how long you've been nursing for: someone is going to ask. At three months? Six months? A year? Doesn't matter. Someone will ask you.

Sometimes the subtext is awe: "Wow! You're still nursing your babies! That's great!" Most times, however, the questioner asks in a most impatient manner. As if there's a deadline to meet and you're missing it. "What are you doing still nursing those babies?"

In my case, the fact that I decided to nurse the twins in the very first place was a big surprise. My doctor (For whom I have the greatest respect.) made it very clear that by nursing the twins full time, I'd be off in some exotic land where few women in our area had ever tread. Then again, I was apparently setting records for birth weights and length of gestation, so perhaps she wasn't too surprised with my decision to breastfeed.

Nursing hasn't always been Easy Street, either (See my rant from the first month if you don't believe me.). Don't get me wrong: once you're in the groove, nursing is easy. It's finding your groove and staying in it that are the hard parts.

When I started out, I wanted to tandem nurse the twins, get them on a schedule and possibly get a little more sleep. Well, it turned out that the twins had a touch of reflux and were tiny geysers of vomit on a very regular basis until they were about four months old. Thus, instead of tandem nursing, I was serially nursing twins to avoid at least some of the puke headed my way.

I've been bitten, pinched, pulled, vomited on, gotten plugged ducts, swollen and inflamed breasts from missing nursing sessions, Emma developed thrush, and Logan developed a preference for one side over the other.

Even with all of that, nursing has still been one of the best things I have done for the twins and for myself. Also? I produced a helluva lotta milk.

Now that we are tandem nursing, I get a bit more sleep at night. The weight loss aspect has been fabulous (I gained 65 lb for the pregnancy and by 7 months postpartum, it was gone. No exercise, just nursing and normal life with twins. I imagine that if you exercised, the weight would whip off even faster. I'm just lazy.). The twins are very snuggly when cuddled up and nursing together. Sometimes they reach over and pat the other twin. Of course, they also sometimes poke and pinch the other twin or attempt to steal the opposite breast, but life is tough around here.

Emma nurses more than Logan does, so when he finishes first, he sits up and smiles at me and we get a little extra bonding in: nose kisses, baby hugs, giggles. When he tires of me, I let him slide off my lap and crawl around the room. Emma and I then snuggle up together. She will finish off Logan's breast (Because there's always more milk in there.) and then crawl all over me like a puppy. She also engages in Nurse-robatics: standing up while nursing, twisting around, getting into Down Dog position, attempting to climb over my shoulder all while still engaged in lip-lock. Ouch! She also pats my tummy, plays with my hair and checks my teeth.

You know, just to make sure they're still in there.

I respond by nibbling on her fingers and chewing on her neck, so I think we're even.

Here are some of my hard-earned twin feeding tips:

5 Tips for Successfully Breastfeeding Twins

1. Get a good book. I highly recommend Mothering Multiples: Breastfeeding and Caring for Twins or More! Read it. Ideally before the twins arrive.
   
2. Be prepared to supplement with formula. The biggest secret to nursing twins is to keep in mind that you may not have milk enough for two on the day they're born. It took me a few weeks of pumping and supplementing with formula until my production increased enough to feed both of them fully. Be prepared to supplement and don't beat yourself up over the fact that this, too, is another area where having twins is decidedly different from having a singleton.
3. Herbal supplements are your friend! Herbal supplements like Alfalfa, Blessed Thistle and Fenugreek will help increase your milk production significantly. Trust me! Or if you don't trust me, read up about it at KellyMom.com.
   
4. Eat well. When breastfeeding twins, you'll burn up about 1000 extra calories a day. You need to eat well to support your body's ability to do that. Now is not the time to go on a diet to lose the pregnancy weight gain. It will come off. Be patient!
5. Drink water. A lot of water. I'm not kidding. Why aren't you drinking some water? Go get some!

Now when someone asks, "So are you still breastfeeding those twins?"

We'll answer, "Hell yeah!"


-- Cross posted at API Speaks for World Breastfeeding Week. BTW, they're having a giveaway over at API in celebration of WBW. Go there and leave a comment to enter the contest to win a copy of LLL’s seminal book on breastfeeding: The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding.

OMG! I'm Pregnant with Twins! Now what?!

Since I seem to get a fair amount of traffic from people apparently trying to determine if they are pregnant with twins, I thought I'd let you in on what you should do next. (As for searching for a quiz to determine if you're pregnant with twins, I don't know how useful those things are. The same answers apply if it's only your second pregnancy: gaining weight fast, being hungry all the time and being nauseated - either more or less - are all normal since every pregnancy is different.)

1. Panic. No, really. Feel free to completely and utterly panic. Give in to your instinct to freak out over discovering you're about to have twins. You may as well, since everyone else around you will be busy telling you things like "How fabulous!", "You're so blessed!", "Better you than me!", or laughing hysterically at you (I'm looking at you, Mom!). Feel free to set up an appointment with yourself to freak out, possibly on a weekly basis. After you've gotten it out of your system, it's time to get to work.
   
2. Do your research. Get a good book. I highly recommend When You're Expecting Twins, Triplets, or Quads, by Dr. Barbara Luke. There's a boatload of information in there and it's very reassuring to read about the research she has done specifically on women pregnant with multiples and how much better your odds actually are than the "common wisdom" seems to indicate.
   
3. Make a goal. Decide now what is important to you for this pregnancy and then pursue it. What do I mean? I mean that when I was pregnant, my whole goal was that at the end of the pregnancy I would have two healthy, full term babies with no NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) time. That was the mantra that I kept running through my head when I got frustrated by how things were going during the pregnancy. It also meant I had to come to terms with gaining a lot of weight, no longer being able to work at the market and being physically unable to do many things that I would normally do.
   
4. Eat. One of the key things you will need to do to support a double (Or more!) pregnancy is to eat and eat well. Take your prenatal supplements. Eat nutritious food. Lots of it. You may not have all 40 weeks of a regular pregnancy to put on weight, so you have to front load your weight gain. Ignore the information in the What To Expect books that suggest you should only need 600 calories a day extra. You're going to need more than that. See Dr. Luke's book for details. Before I knew it was twins I was continually stunned by just how hungry I was. I would be tooling along, lah-dee-dah and then suddenly: Pow! Starving to death, shaky and somewhat nauseated. So eat! You only have one shot at doing pregnancy right. Weight gain is temporary, especially if you nurse.
   
5. Drink water. Do you think 8 8 ounce glasses of water daily is a lot? Guess how much you have to drink? About twice that. A little more if it's summer time while you're pregnant. You are supporting the life support systems for three people. You need a lot of water to do so. My doctor had me drinking 5 liters a day. Do you know what happened if I didn't? Contractions. Whoops! Not wanting any NICU time, I sat the hell down and drank yet more water.
   
6. Sit down. All of that weight gain means additional stresses on your system and lower back. Your feel will swell up. You'll probably contract a bunch if you're standing too long or working too hard. If you're lucky, you'll feel the contractions and have enough warning about when you're over-doing it so that you can sit down. During my first pregnancy, I never felt the Braxton-Hicks contractions, I'd just occasionally notice that my belly was really tight! During this pregnancy, they were very obvious when they occured. More than 4 contractions in a half-hour period is cause for concern. The solution is to suck down yet another liter of water and lay down, then you track your contractions over the course of an hour. Still more than 4? Call your doctor. Do not mess around when you're body is trying to tell you to Slow Down!
   
7. Slack off. Sitting down all of the time means you won't be able to wash the dishes, do the laundry, go shopping or any one of the hundreds of little things you'd normally do that involve standing and walking. Get used to it! I really resented the enforced idleness. I couldn't even focus enough to read a book after awhile. Now, of course, I really wish I had more time to slack! I don't, however, so learn this from me: enjoy your time off your feet and slack off. There will be plenty of work later. Make a list of all of those books you've been wanting to read and plow through it!
   
8. Plan ahead. Here's where most everyone I know seems to mess up. Eric and I kept talking about how we should make double batches of food and freeze it for when we'd need it after the twins were born. Great idea! Did we? Nooooo! Which was crazy because we really needed easy to prepare food after they were born. Be ye not so stupid! (As Dooce would say.) Plan ahead for mealtimes. You'll be glad you did.
   
9. Get help. You are going to need help. I. Am. Not. Kidding. YOU are going to NEED help. Whether you have Superman/Wonder Woman for your spouse or not, you will need all the help you can get. Ask for it. Accept it if offered. Pin down friends and family members for specific help. Laundry? Shopping? Cooking? Cleaning? Any of it and all of it: accept it. Your life becomes a blender set to Frappe! after your multiple babies arrive and trying to get your act together while immensely sleep deprived is hard enough. Get help. It doesn't mean you're a failure or a bad mother or a horrible housekeeper. It means you are overwhelmed. Trust me: twins are overwhelming!
   
10. Delegate. Are you normally Super Woman? Do you run the family errands, do the cooking, cleaning, maintain everyone's schedules and all that jazz? Guess what? A whole lot of that is about to come to a screeching halt. Your spouse doesn't cook/clean/do laundry? Now, while you're pregnant, is a great time for them to learn! Things are only going to get harder after the babies arrive. Work those issues out early. Especially if you're planning on breastfeeding. If you are going to breastfeed multiples, you will spend the majority of your time doing just that and only that. Newborns are awfully hungry!
    
11. Hire out. When all else fails, pay the money for in-home services. I'm using my Christmas money for a cleaning service. Best Christmas present I've ever received! (Thanks Mom and Dad!) Don't have the money? Barter with friends. Do you have skills you can trade for services? Suggest a swap! Also, be prepared to lower your standards...a lot. Cleaning the house is the lowest of my priorities at the moment. I'd rather be working on the farm, getting dirty, hot and sweaty outside than dusting and mopping inside.
12. Hang in there. Pregnacy may "only" be 36 to 40 weeks long, but it will be the longest 8 to 9 months of your life. Pain and exhaustion will become really familiar to you. Just try to keep in mind that it will eventually end. In yet more - but different! - pain and exhaustion. I am fully aware that twin pregnancies can be risky and that I was very lucky with how well mine went. There's never any guarantee that everything will be OK, no matter how good your attitude or how perfectly you follow the doctor's advice. Just do the best you can and remember that it really is "only" 36 or so weeks.
    
    Eat well. Drink a lot. Sit down. Slack off. Take care of yourself and your babies. You're the only one that can do that and they are counting on you.

Good luck!

Beaten By Biology

I was at Market Wednesday night, and didn't get home until 9:15 pm with almost exploding breasts. I rushed in, grabbed my sleeping saviors and nursed them into deeper unconsciousness.

For once they are really really sleeping: they've been asleep for seven hours. But have I been sleeping that whole time?

Noooooo!

Instead, I was woken up by incredibly, exceedingly, painfully full breasts.

Not wanting to wake the twins, I pumped some. Now, thirty minutes later, I'm still so full that I'm beginning to feel nauseated by the pain.

I can't win the Sleeping Battle, can I? Beaten by my own Biology.

Guess I'd better go wake somebody. [Weep!]

Bite me!

Not you. Logan.

He bites and pinches, and frankly if you were to do that, the friendship would be over! Tonight he pinched me so hard, on either side of my breast, that I am now bruised. He pinched me so hard that I had a hard time unclenching the tiny fists of pinching power to release my mangled mammary.

Breastfeeding is so fun. So fun that I've made you a list.

Things I Love and Hate about Breastfeeding

Hate:

1. The 6-8 week "break-in" period. Don't try and tell me that it won't hurt if I get in some magical position that is somehow unattainable by mortal woman. Breasts are sensitive and those that have never performed actual work before and are suddenly required to hit the ground running with twins are going to hurt.
2. Thrush. May I never have that again. You neither. That sucked. Although the gentian violet purple mouth thing was pretty cool looking. In a weird sort of way.
3. Biting. Thank goodness no one has teeth yet.
4. Pinching. Dammit! Stop!
5. Poking. Ow!
6. Pulling. What am I, taffy? Stop it!
7. Spraying all over everything. Apparently my children, Logan especially, like to take milk baths and I am to provide the milk.
8. Leaking and dripping. In bed. Out of bed. Doesn't matter. I'm soaking in my own puddles. Bleah.
9. Vomit. Milk that goes in too fast, comes out too fast, as well.
10. Paranoia. Am I making enough? is the perennial question of newly breastfeeding moms. Makes you crazy.
11. Being on call 24/7. No one else around here is lactating so I'm always on duty. Eric's not trying very hard to lactate, either. I've suggested it to him but Noooooo! he says. Phooey. The flip side, of course is #8 below.
12. No chai. Sniffle!
    
13. Being exposed in public. I'm all for breastfeeding whenever and wherever you need to, but Logan has this terrible habit of suddenly pulling and then popping off just to take a look around. Dude! You're 4.5 months old! Ain't nothin' to see that won't be there when you're either a) no longer nursing or b) old enough to actually know what you're looking at!
14. Having a cold belly.
15. Tandem nursing. When the twins are awake and I try tandem nursing there are often one handed wrestling matches that take place on my chest. These often lead to the popping off and crying of one or both twins with twisting and arching of backs. Nursing is over when that happens.
16. Feeling trapped. Whether I'm tandem nursing or just one, I often feel as if I'm stuck to the chair.

Love:

1. Getting past the "break-in" period. Suddenly you feel like a pro and that maybe this breastfeeding thing is just as cool as everyone says?
2. Being patted and stroked.
3. That fuzzy sleepy feeling you get when everyone is nursing well.
4. Looking down at happy, sleepy nursing babies. They're so cute! Too bad I can't photograph the specific look I'm thinking of. My camera is too heavy to work one handed at arm's length.
5. Watching the twins grow on breastmilk alone gives me a powerful sense of accomplishment. That fat roll? Yeah...I did that!
6. Weight loss! Duuude! I've lost 61 pounds in 4 months and while I seem to be stuck on the last 4 pounds, I'm wearing my regular clothes again. Yeeha! As the weather warms up I'll be out walking more and more and the last few pounds will come off. Assuming I don't go crazy with the scones, that is.
7. No bottles to wash. The flip side is #11 above.
8. Being able to knock an exhausted baby out with the Power of the Boob is a super power every nursing mom can claim.
9. Non-stinky poops. Won't last long before they're on solid food, but until then their poop doesn't stink.
10. Being able to fall back asleep while someone is nursing is awesome!
    
11. It's free!
12. I've learned to type one handed.
13. Nursing frequently leads to frequent blog posts. You're welcome!
14. It also leads to reading lots and lots of stuff online. For reasons I don't understand, it's easier to nurse and read on the computer than it is to read a book.
15. You can often soothe an upset baby by offering a warm and pillowy breast.
16. Warm, cuddly babies. Makes you wanna hug 'em and squeeze 'em!

Well, I'm off to bed. Time to rest before the hungry hordes awaken again!

Anything else I should add to my list?

Tit for Tat

The scene: we were talking for the babies, as usual (What? You don't talk for your babies? Come onnnn. Everybody does it!). I had Emma and Eric had Logan. Logan had finished nursing a short while ago and Emma, who'd just recently awakened was waiting for her turn. In order to put the grumpy Logan down, Eric had to be ready for a hand off. Emma "complained" that Logan was guarding "her" breast from her.

Minutes after she finally got to nurse, Eric was back in the room with Logan who was looking for more milk.

Emma: "No! No milk for you! These are mine!" Protectively throws an arm across the other breast.
Logan: "Noooo! You can't have both! Dat one's my breast!"
Emma: "Not today! You kept me waiting for mine for so long. Now you have to wait."
Logan: "Dat's not fair!"
Emma: "Is, too. I here now. You go away! Mine! You blocked me from mine, you not get yours."
Logan: "Oh, so it's tit for tat now, is it?"

Hatchet cracks up laughing. Eric wins the "argument".

A few minutes later, a vicious karate fight breaks out and Emma is knocked out of the way by a flying kick.

Yeah, I know, it's a lot funnier if you're here.

And sleep deprived. We're hysterically funny if you're sleep deprived.

Three Months*

Three whole months have passed since the twins were born. Things change quickly at this stage, not least of which is the sudden jump in sleep we seem to be getting. It may just be a fluke, or a short term improvement, but I'll take it.

In the last two nights, both Emma and Logan have slept through the night. Emma is the sleeping champion with last night being her best one yet. While it took us until midnight to get them to go down for the night, once they went down Emma slept until 8:30 am. Unfortunately Logan only slept until 5:30 am, so we didn't get near as much sleep as we might have if they had been in synch. Oh well. I am holding out hope that one day he will sleep longer. I suspect he's just trying to get more feedings in so that he can surge ahead of Emma on the weight gain.

On Monday I had Eric take the twins in to the doctor because of a skin issue I'd noticed on Sunday. (I don't know about you, but I always seem to notice something wrong with my children on a Saturday or Sunday, long past business hours.) Upon returning, Eric gave me the lowdown: lucky us it's eczema, cradle cap is no worse even though the back of Logan's head is creeping me out, the vomiting isn't a milk allergy (so my love of ice cream is safe) but it does appear to be gastroesophageal reflux so we have to sit them up for at least 20 minutes after nursing to keep it under control. Regardless of how bad the cradle cap and eczema looked to me, the doctor was completely unconcerned and suggested cortisone for each. While in some ways it was reassuring that he'd clearly seen far worse cases than ours, I didn't feel reassured that these skin issues would be going away any time soon. Poor little things! Their lovely soft baby skin now feels like something you'd find on a crocodile.

We also found out that they now both weigh 13 pounds each. The two of them together are still about one pound short of Oliver's current weight. They're trying to catch up. We saw Oliver (and Misty, Lee and Marlena) on Saturday and marveled at the difference in their sizes. Yes, Oliver is 5 months older than the twins, however he is clearly built on a different scale than my children. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures since I thought I'd have a second visit with Misty but the weather interfered. Le sigh!

Moving on...

Emma has good control of her hands now and is working on determining if she likes her whole fist in her mouth or just the first two fingers of her right hand. Caitlin liked the middle two fingers of her right hand, so it will be interesting to see if that preference repeats. Logan doesn't show much interest in putting his fingers in his mouth, but is showing good control when he reaches out and plays with assorted toys on the swing, vibrating chair or playmat.

The twins have decided to become polar opposites on the bath issue. Emma loves taking a bath and hates being removed, having lotion applied and getting dressed. Logan hates being washed but doesn't mind being in the water and loves getting lotioned up and dressed. Either way there's crying in the bathroom. Thankfully Emma is no longer doing her brain melting scream, so it has become a bearable level of screaming.

My bathing beauty.

Feet!

They coo at one another a lot more now and are fascinated by Caitlin. She's the coolest thing ever and can interrupt a crying jag by singing to them. She's not always excited to be pressed into service as a baby calming device but enjoys being the one that can get them to calm down. We heap on the praise when this happens. Anytime she does anything related to the twins voluntarily we lay it on thick. Sometimes the things she sings or talks to the twins about are a little weird or heartbreaking. She was telling a crying Emma that she needed to stop crying while I was nursing Logan because it wasn't Emma's turn to get attention and that as long as Emma cried Caitlin wouldn't be able to get attention. Ooof! Have I mentioned that I'm really looking forward to the twins getting bigger and more interactive with Caitlin?

She really needs attention and now Emma knows it, too.

I tossed the twins into a pair of outfits my mom gave me and learned a little something: infant boys really don't like button down shirts. It took way more effort to get him in and out of that shirt than it will ever be worth. He objected to the business casual wear. Loudly. Emma, on the other hand, tried to eat her dress. Does that mean she likes it?

Surrounded.
Dogs from Caitlin. Bears from Great-Aunt Lenore. Bugs with links from Nana Sue.

Logan smiling at Caitlin.

Emma, captured in a rare moment not trying to eat the dress.

In some ways, it feels like a lot more time has passed than three months, while in other ways it seems like time has just whipped past. I suspect it has a lot to do with sleep deprivation: it does funny things to your sense of time. After seeing how mature Oliver looked at eight months, I'm really looking forward to seeing how the twins will develop and change over the coming months.

* I've been trying to write this post all night, but in between cluster feeds and a vomiting-while-sleeping issue (resulting in an immediate bath and a strip down of bedding), it has taken until 12:30 am to get started.

A whole new world!

Can you hear Ariel singing? I can!

Something big is afoot at Chez Hatchet!

Did you know that babies that once drank from bottles in their first few weeks of life can forget how to do so over time? Yeah, I didn't really think about it much either until my MIL said she'd watch the kids for Someone's 40th birthday on Friday.

So now we're trying to re-bottle train in time for our dinner out. Alone. Sans child and infants.

Things aren't going as well as we'd thought they would but we're working on it! Or rather, Eric is while I kinda hide from Emma and still nurse Logan. Then once he's got Emma squared away it will be Logan's turn to scream and cry whilst I sit somewhere else in the house and feel tiny daggers pierce my heart at each cry. They just want to breastfeed and I just want to escape for dinner. Le sigh!

My plan is to nurse before we go, then nurse after we return and then determine if we can go to see The Golden Compass afterwards. Dinner and a movie out aren't exactly big and splashy plans for your 40th birthday, but with twins in the picture they seem enormous. The magnitude something as simple as bottle feeding takes on is incredible.

1. Remove milk from breast with breast pump.
2. Attach nipple to bottle.
3. Insert nipple into infant mouth.
4. Infant removes milk efficiently without unnecessary screaming, crying or thrashing about. Not throwing up would be a bonus.

Wish us luck! And speed. Definitely speed.

Waking up on the right side of cute

Emma is in a good mood this morning. She's smiling and cooing and perky. She was so busy smiling and proto-laughing at me that she couldn't nurse. She's been sleeping really well lately: 4-5 hour spans. Unfortunately she hasn't taught Logan this trick, so he's still waking up every 3 hours.

Weep!

Last night we went to dinner for the 2nd time with the twins. They did a great job: Emma slept through most of dinner, while Logan woke up, nursed and then hung out quietly while we ate. So far we've racked up two lunches and two dinners out, it's incredible!

Going out to eat with them is like playing with fire: you never know if or when everything is going to explode into a horror of screaming and wailing and destruction of personal property. I was worried because you never know when they are going to vomit. Sometimes I can tell and burp them before they erupt, other times I am just as surprised as they are and just as covered. I've been doing better with covering them with a Vomit Deflection Device (aka a receiving blanket) and have gotten pretty good at turning them away just in time to avoid getting covered myself.

But you never know.

I was also concerned about going out to a busy restaurant and being conspicuously on display in the center of the room. Having to nurse in public is not high on my list of desirable Lifetime Achievements. While I have done it and will do it, I don't especially like it. Add in the fantastic frisson of fear one feels, wondering if their offspring will cover themselves, the floor and me in sour, curdled milk and you have a recipe for tension only relieved by making it out of the restaurant clad in the same clothing I had entered in, with my clothes in their original condition.

My concerns were immediately put to rest when I saw our table: we were placed in the back corner of the restaurant in a little alcove. I sat to the left with my back to the main part of the restaurant, secure in the knowledge that I would be less likely to flash the world my workin' breasts when someone woke up. Someone would, it was just a question of who.

In the end, it was fine! Dinner was good: embarrassment and vomit free. Many thanks to Pop Pop and Nana Sue for taking us out.

Later that night back at home, of course, both of them threw up on me one right after the other.

Figures!

Newsflash!

No one threw up on my all day yesterday!

Yeehaaaaaw!

Unfortunately, I'm certain it's just a momentary blip in our Tale of Yuck. Le sigh!

Conversations you never thought you'd have

"Misty? I'm going to have call you back. I just got thrown up on."

This conversation brought to you by Parenthood, Breastmilk and the Letter L.

Moo

In the process of clearing off my desk (You really don't want to know how awful my desk looks.) and looking for the bills, I ran across the two week check up sheet from the pediatrician. The first line under Nutrition caught my eye.

Nutrition

• Most babies eat every 2-4 hours around the clock. Average is around 24-32 ounces a day.

Let that sink in a moment, why don't you.

If we go by those average figures, I am producing 48-64 ounces of milk every day.

I'm making up to half a gallon of milk or possibly more.

I really am a cow.

Moo.

Growth Spurt!

Argh!

I'm out of milk. A lot. The twins do not appreciate this.

Waiting for the growth spurt to end and the milk production to ramp up. Oy!

Thrush update

Logan is fine, while Emma has the lovely ick covered tongue, so she's the one we're working on medicating. Oh and me, of course. Thrush, apparently, doesn't pass from baby to baby, but instead from mother to baby and vice versa, so unless Logan starts showing signs, we aren't dosing him with Nystantin.

Once again the admonition to Follow Your Instincts went right over my head. A few days ago I started thinking that Emma's tongue looked funny but convinced myself it was probably just milk. Then she started pulling away from me and fretting while nursing and that was weird as well as painful. Emma has not yet received the notice that nipples are not made of chewing gum. The fretting turned to hollering while nursing, but I thought it was gas or frustration with a lack of milk production. How I could blame myself while she's clearly putting on lots of weight? Normal milk producing fears. Couple this with the fact that when I started researching thrush there were other things that were also like thrush that it might have been.

Add all ingredients together and stir briskly. This resulted in my waffling until the weekend over whether it was or wasn't thrush until I got the final sign: shooting pains in my breasts. Not the sometimes painful tingle of milk let down, but a sharp "someone's poking me in the breast with a sharp metal poker" shooting pain. No fun at all.

Of course by this time on Saturday it was too late to call or see a doctor until Monday. It was also impossible to justify thrush as an "urgent" call to the pediatrician. That's when the frantic research began, while Emma screamed at me that her mouth was hurting.

Bad mommy!

A not-so-quick trip to the store (all of us going shopping is no longer "quick") with children in tow and I returned with acidophilus, odorless garlic, chewable vitamin C, and B complex to start my War on Yeast. Add to that a vinegar rinse for my breasts and Emma's tushie and that's what we started with to hold us over until Monday.

Now I have an ointment for me and the Nystantin for Emma and my plethora of pills. Emma is already doing better and I noticed the shooting pains didn't come back after I started downing pills on the weekend. Now I just need to find time in between nursings to apply my drugs. I have to keep wiping it off when someone wants to nurse - which is apparently every damned minute. We apply Emma's drugs 4x per day - we have to apply it to our fingers and wipe it around her mouth since she won't swish it around like the directions suggest. Emma is such a slacker!

Well, she's hollering for me, so I've gotta go. Le sigh!

Updated to add: To avoid cross-contamination, each baby now has their assigned breast until this little side adventure is over. I'm hoping to avoid spreading around the yeasty badness. If possible.

Now we have THRUSH?!

What the HELL?!

Help!

Any advice? I don't think the doctor's office is open tomorrow. What treatment can I start for thrush right now?

Bloody hell.

Yeah, breastfeeding is a frickin' riot.

This whole thing started with a milk blister, so I thought I "just" had a plugged duct. Now it's possible that was my initial thrush warning sign.

Updated in the cool light of morning to add: Now that I'm not currently faced with a screaming, pulling-off-the-breast desperate child, I've come up with a few plans. I'm going to pick up acidophilus capsules, Kyolic (garlic) pills, and start downing large amounts of vitamin C. We'll use vinegar rinses on the twins, me and our clothing and buy a whacking lot of new breastpads.

It's very hard to maintain your cool in the face of a screaming pain-filled baby.

Time for photos

The twins are sleeping - at the same time! I'm stealing a few minutes to edit photos. They'll probably show up in some of the previous posts. Like the one about my dad.

Then, suddenly, they will be everywhere!

Hey, funny thing I figured out regarding my two migraines on Monday! They were directly related to the sheer amount of chocolate I'd been imbibing. AND as a bonus, they were what was keeping one or the other twin awake and fussy at 1 am for 3 nights running. Bad me! Eating chocolate (or other caffeine sources) late at night = fussy babies. Last night, they slept after the 1 am feeding until 3:20 am and then until 6:45 am. Much nicer than waking every hour or 1.5 hours.

Color me foolish!

Links to photos: 2 weeks. Three weeks.

Argh!

Growth spurt. Need I say more?

Going

To

Die!


[Thud!]

Hatchet says...

After having been reduced from a book reading, power gardening, new business startin', photographer and all 'round well-rounded person, I am reduced to this:

Mooooooooooooooooo!

Something seems to happen around 7-8 pm at night. I seem to run really low on milk and the twins are not happy about this. The nursing will not stop until the milk comes back.

Or until I get desperate enough to have Eric make formula.

Someone send the Milk Fairy.

Hatchet says...

At dinner tonight, surrounded on one side by mom with Logan and on the other side by Eric with Emma, I hunched over my chicken soup, inhaling it as quickly as I could.

"I feel like I'm surrounded by vultures!" I grumped into my unphotographed soup.

My mother and husband cackled. The babies remained grumpy, their restlessness entirely due to their hunger.

"If I don't eat, you don't eat!" I snarled at them between bites.

These babies have no patience whatsoever. Phooey.

Emma says...

Technically, Eric says for Emma...

Emma was grumping about wanting milk while I was grumping about wanting to take a shower.

Eric spoke for Emma saying, "I have a grump/milk tank. It's entirely up to you what you fill it with but the less milk I have, the more grump I have room for and the more milk, the less grump. So. You gonna feed me now or what?"

With an explanation like that, how can I refuse?

Postponed that shower yet again. And then her brother woke up...