Friday, February 19, 2010

Beat This Threesome!

No you dirty pervs, I don't mean threesome as in the fanciful "menage et." I'm talking about the holy grail of breastfeeding. Tandem Baby! Yeeeee haaaaaa!

So I've been thinking about giving up the bpa-free baby feeder (the bosom, my friends, the bosom- stay with me here). Trying to breastfeed was sucking my will to live. It looked a little like this:

11:45- Try to coax a baby to be au natural. Crying, screaming, clawing, and wiggling often commenced. Sometimes we'd get an alternate scenario where said baby would clamp its mouth shut in protest and refuse to open or fake being asleep and do nothing despite all singing, tickling, and comedy routines performed by yours truly.

11:55- Give up with Baby #1. Move on to Baby #2.

12:00- Change Baby #2 and repeat 11:45 while trying to ignore Baby #1 screaming & hollering for milk.

And that's NOTHING compared to a "successful" feed. Try feeding one baby for a sufficient amount of time while Baby #2 screams. Then you stop with Baby #1 and Baby #2 starts acting the fool because he or she didn't get enough milk and needs a bottle to supplement.

When one of my kiddos wants to do it natural style, they can be latched on for up to an hour. ONE. HOUR.

Oh yeah, and when all this is over, I have to pump. We're looking at a ridiculous amount of time here. Whereas, I could simultaneously pump and tandem bottle feed and be done in 30 minutes.

So, I was done....almost. I was *this* close to giving it up and exclusively pumping. But I kept hearing that my supply would tank with pumping in a few weeks or months and I hadn't quite gotten over the picture of breastfeeding them in my head. So I made a few half-hearted attempts here and there and realized that my babies had all of a sudden developed the ability to breastfeed. Not always. But I could get them on at least once a day.

So, I started getting crafty. I started outsmarting my little babies. I would bottle feed one early and then try to get the other to breastfeed. And this started to work. (Of course, it was still taking forever and a day to do all this but I was feeling like HELLO! I AM DOING THIS).

And today I was so confident that I was like, "What the hell. Let's give this tandem feeding a shot." So, I gathered up my boppies and couch throw pillows, put a movie on, and stuck those babies on as best I could. And they ate, suckas! They may not have had the perfect latches (it's a little hard to follow protocol without bonking a baby in the head with your elbow), but they ate for 40 minutes, fell off on their own, and proceeded to sleep like the dead for an hour and half. And then we did it again 3 hours later.

I'd say, overall, we were pretty satisfied with ourselves. Go team!

3 comments:

  1. That is awesome!!! Good for you for not giving up, I think I would. :) GO TEAM

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  2. ROCK ON!! That is so awesome! Congratulations! I hope it continues to go well.

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  3. Congratulations! You must be so thrilled!

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