Tag Archives: Breastfeeding

The 4am Feed

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I confess. I am lazy.

That’s the secret to my efficiency. For example, I’ve got the 4am feed down to a 20-minute science. It took some tweaking for the babies to cooperate, but now most days they do. Actually a lot of what I’m doing now is what I did with Toddler, only I had forgotten until I had to rediscover it all over again. So, if you must do a middle-of-the-night feed, here are some tricks I’ve found that work great for me.

First, not part of the efficiency thing, but greatly helpful to set your babies up for sleep, dim the lights down to one very low wattage bulb. I think mine is 10 watts. It sits in the corner of the room farthest away from the babies. The babies get a clean diaper, swaddled, then placed in their spots in the cosleeper. I sometimes play soft music from my iPhone for them (Pandora’s Lullabye station). Then…

1. Feed babies as much as possible before going to bed. In our case, babies load up before sleeping for good, often 6 ounces over a couple of feedings starting at around 9:30pm. They’re usually out by 11pm.

2. Before going to bed, get all bottles and pump accessories for the night/early morning ready. For me, this means putting nipples on and labeling all bottles. I usually have two bottles of formula made also, as backup. All pump flanges and bottles are clean and screwed together, ready to use.

3. Pump one last time and go to sleep at the same time as the babies. It’s tempting to watch a little TV or get things done while they’re asleep, but I’ve noticed they sleep better with me nearby and I really value my own sleep. I’m sometimes already drifting off while they’re still rustling to settle in.

4. Do not get up before they’re supposed to. If they loaded up on milk before going down, they don’t need to be fed until 4am. Usually all I have to do is replace the paci for the rustling baby and they’re back out before they can really wake up. Toddler never took a paci, so I would just jiggle her bassinet a little and she’d go back to sleep.

5. When the time does come to feed, pop a bottle in the mouth of the hungry one and prop it with whatever you have (I use their blankets). Then do the same with the other one, even if he/she is still fast asleep. They’re still swaddled, so no chance of waving arms knocking the bottles out. My babies will eat while asleep and keep sleeping afterwards without even waking up. I also no longer burp or change them (unless there’s poop) in the middle of the night.

6. While they are eating, pump. There’s a way to secure the flanges with the insides of your elbows by resting the bottles on your thighs, so that you can read your iPhone or reprop a bottle  when necessary. When I’m done, babies have finished eating and have probably also fallen asleep. All I have to do is retrieve their bottles. I leave the flanges on the bottles I just pumped, and everything is left on the nightstand until morning.

7. I can usually do this while still half-asleep myself. Sometimes I will get up to drink some water, pee, and read my phone for a bit in bed before sleeping again, but I can just as easily go right back to sleep. My babies will sleep until 9am, if I replace the paci for them a couple of times starting around 7am. I am usually up by 8ish to watch Toddler after Husband leaves for work, so I can get in a pump and have breakfast with her before they wake up.

Another plus to this is, they usually wake at the same time! That means the day starts off with them on the same schedule. It usually doesn’t stay that way, and I’ve given up imposing a strict togetherness, but sometimes they can stay within a half hour of each other all day.

I’m looking forward to them sleeping all the way till morning and taking regular solid naps (Toddler did it before she was their age), but I think this is as good as it gets for a middle-of-the-night feeding (for twins). But I’ll gladly take any other suggestions to streamline things even further!

lunchldyd is mom to an almost 3 yr old daughter and 4 month old b/g twins, taking whatever sleep she can get!

20 Reasons Why Having Kids is Like Being a Celebutante

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  1. Due to nursing, you’ve had more nip-slips than Tara Reid.
  2. You’re constantly being followed. You have your own tiny paparazzi, and if you have teens they WILL photograph you on their phones at the worst possible moments of your life.
  3. Someone else is always trying to do your hair and makeup.
  4. People are always judging you and giving you unwanted advice. Let Miley smoke her weed, let Lindsey steal jewelry, and let me feed my kids chocolate for breakfast! It’s none of your darn business.
  5. There’s a different person in your bed every night. Sometimes another one (or two) by morning.
  6. People vie for your attention and break out in fits of jealousy over your affection. Forget autographs. They want your soul!! (LESSON- always give the same amount of food, snacks, juice, milk, hugs, kisses, Christmas presents, and snuggles!)
  7. Your house should be on an episode of Cribs (because you have so many).
  8. You have real scare-the-bleep-out-of-you stalkers that will stand by your bed quietly staring at you until you wake up fearing for your life.
  9. You are constantly being watched like you’re a patient at the Betty Ford Clinic. You can’t shower, poop, or brush your teeth alone. Not because you’re on suicide watch or you might chug down the Listerine, but because to them you’re just that fascinating!
  10. People are obsessed with your body. ( I know, gross, right?) They want to see every inch of it and want to analyze what they see. They ask a million questions. “Are those your boobs? Is ALL of that your butt? Why is hair there? What is that bump? What is that crease? What is that dent?? Will I get that? Will I have those?”
  11. You don’t have an actual ‘job’ yet you’re busier than everyone you know. Maybe your days aren’t filled with fashion shows and charity lunch appearances, but some days you actually wish YOU could wear the diapers to save time.
  12. You’re an embarrassment to your family. This isn’t because of a sex tape and drug abuse, but more due to your mom jeans, ‘I didn’t have time to brush my teeth’ breath, and showing them love in public. You’ve been called ‘that’ mom.
  13. You have your own fragrance (though I doubt anyone would buy mine). Think bleach/bacon/pee (not mine!)/ pancake batter/Desitin/sweat-socks. Awesome, right?
  14. You go half the time without a bra, and when you do wear one people ask if you’ve had ‘work done’.
  15. You stay up until wee hours at the ‘club’. (And by club I mean reading a book from your reading group’s list that doesn’t rhyme or teach phonics.)
  16. You have others do your shopping, or do it at odd hours so you’re not seen in public.
  17. You always make a grand entrance because you’re definitely late and you have an entourage.
  18. You think you can sing beautifully and deserve a recording contract. (Although I don’t believe anyone would buy a CD of me belting out Disney and Laurie Berkner songs in my Suburban. But hey, Kim K sold her record, so it could happen, right??)
  19. You’re the most talented (in your mind) person in the world!! Bring on the party planning, cake making, soccer coaching, costume sewing, toilet scrubbing, and butt wiping! You can do anything! You’re Super Mom!! (Riiiight….and Paris Hilton can act….). But I really do feel like a bad-ass when I get ANYTHING accomplished.

    AND FINALLY…

  20. You are the most important person in the world!!! Not because you’re a regular on TMZ and people copy even your bad habits, but because to those people you’ve created, you’re everything. You’re their meal making, scrape kissing, tear drying, closet monster slaying, homework checking, bubble beard creating, constant chauffeuring, fort building best friend. That’s right, you’re a bad-ass.

    You’re a mama.

Sundy is Super Mom to four amazing kids, including a teenager, a toddler, and 1-year-old twins.

NICU rules

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My friend’s wife, Maria, was on bed-rest for the last few months of her twin pregnancy. They live in Cyprus. I’ve been checking in with them on Skype, every other Thursday. It gets down to numbers – be it weeks, days, weight, length, or contractions.

——

“30 weeks. Woooo hooooo!”

“So far so good! Maria is doing well. Bored, but fine.” he replied.

——

“32 weeks – great news! What’s the latest?”

“Doctor says all is good. We’re aiming for the 22nd of December; 36 weeks.”

——-

And last Thursday: “34 weeks, how’s it going?”

“We’re scheduled for a C-section in about 3 hours.” They were at the doctor’s clinic, waiting. “The smaller one has plateau’d at 1.7 kilo; the bigger one is 2.4 kilo. The smaller isn’t growing anymore.”

————-

Friday on the phone with my friend: The little one is doing well. It’s the bigger one though, he cried when he was born, and then suddenly stopped breathing. I was asked to leave the delivery room at that point. They held him upside down. He was blue…I panicked.

I remember the worry that gripped me every time I was asked to leave the NICU. Either Rahul had gone into yet another sleep apnea; for what seemed like a little too long, or they had to set, and then re-set an IV into an already rebellious Leila’s miniscule, 1.2kilo body-weight, hand or foot. The screaming, the suffering you hear from a creature as tiny as she was, through the thickest hospital walls, is heart-wrenching.

My friend and his wife seem to have their emotions under control. I clearly remember that it wasn’t easy to stay level. But I had to, no matter what. I seemed unemotional, distant, “strong”, because otherwise I would break down. That meant I barely spoke to anyone, other than minor, somewhat polite interaction with the medical staff and with my parents and mother-in-law, who had moved to Hong Kong to help me during those 6 weeks, and after. I managed it the best way that I could. That’s it.

I hated my phone more than ever before. I couldn’t stand to see Maher on his. It had to be off in the NICU. And if I wasn’t at the hospital, and it rang – it was one of 3 options: Maher, someone I didn’t really want to go into any detail with, or the NICU. Luckily for us, it was never the last option.

Regardless of the calm my friend has portrayed, I’m contacting him daily, but apprehensively. You never know with this: one day the milk feeds are up, the next day they’ve been stopped because it seems there is a fatal infection brewing in the intestines. One day Twin 1 is moved out of the NICU into the slightly bigger babies room, the next day the baby in the bed next to Twin 2 dies.

One of my initial, harder moments was on a Wednesday afternoon, the third day after the birth. It was the day I left the hospital. I walked out, free after months of bed-rest; but I was leaving my babies behind.

Maria will only see her babies on Sunday, after she is discharged. On Thursday, she gave birth at the clinic, and the babies were rushed off in an ambulance, to an NICU. I realized that what my doctors did, what seemed obvious then, makes much more sense – they put me in an ambulance at the private hospital where I’d spent the last two weeks of my pregnancy, waiting out contractions, so that I could give birth at 31 weeks, at a major, public hospital, that had a state of the art NICU on its 6th floor.  I didn’t see my babies until they were 17 hours old, but they were in boxes, safe, somewhere in the same building.

In the hour after I saw them for the first time, when I saw and heard Rahul cry out – in pain – and I couldn’t do anything, not even just pick him, I realized that I would have to find the deepest of my strengths, love, and compassion to get through this.

She was 2 weeks old when we saw Leila’s face for the first time; Maher and I happened to be next to her incubator when a nurse changed her sunglasses. Both babies had jaundice when they were born, which is quite normal. Leila’s dragged on for a while though. It is treated by phototherapy – a light that shines on the babies – front and back. The babies wear a white mask to protect their eyes. On most babies in this ward, the patches are as big as their faces.

I tried to spend every moment possible with my babies, visiting hours for parents only, were from 9am to 12:30pm, and then from 2pm to 8pm. I spoke to L and R, sang to them – out of tune, and during the week, when Maher was back in Chengdu I played an Mp3 of him singing for them. I caressed them, and when they were stable enough, I clumsily changed their diapers, and even attempted to breastfeed them.

The medical team of this hospital, The Queen Mary, HK, knows what it’s doing. From the moment we arrived – me contracting and making guided decisions in labour, Maher figuring out the administrative details, we knew we were in good hands.

But the NICU staff didn’t always explain a lot to us, nor were they particularly nice. Of course the team is very busy giving life to babies; giving them a second chance. They don’t have time for frantic, lurking parents; at least that’s how we felt at our NICU. They deal with immense fragility scientifically; they attach ventilator’s to tiny babies, insert IV’s, measure and inject milk feeds into a tube that goes straight into the baby’s stomach, and then suck out and measure the undigested material through the same tube, they monitor and record every minute change on a tight, 24-hour schedule. Not easy for any parent to handle. And oh yeah, they let the babies cry.

There was one nurse though, who made the difference. She always smiled. She not only encouraged me to breast-feed, but she also advised me and gave me pamphlets about it. She’s the nurse who organized a parent support group one Sunday afternoon. That meeting opened us up. Her kindness and compassion made my visits a little easier.

———

At the NICU in Cyprus, my friends are only allowed to see their babies between 1 and 2 pm, and then again between 5 and 6pm.

A friend of mine had to send her 2 month old baby to an NICU in Chengdu, for pneumonia. No one was allowed in. Full stop.

On the other hand, a friend of mine in the UK would go in to see her baby in the middle of the night be it because she was gripped by anxiety or because she had a strong urge to stay close to her baby.

The NICU rules everywhere seem to differ. What was your NICU experience like? What were the visiting hours? Was the staff pleasant, and helpful towards the parents? Did they encourage breastfeeding? Who was allowed in?

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Natasha lives in Chengdu, China with her husband Maher. She is mum of  twins Leila and Rahul, and was an Ashtanga Yoga teacher until her little yogis became the teachers. You can find more of her thoughts and stories at Our Little Yogis.

 

Weaning on two (or three!) different timelines

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For a number of reasons including my sore back, my schoolwork demands, and our childcare schedule, I’m getting more proactive about weaning. (And, I think I read heard imagined that toddlers stop breastfeeding and start walking about the same time. Since our girls are almost 18 months old and still not walking, maybe this will speed thing up).

For the last couple of months, I’ve shifted more and more to the “don’t offer, don’t refuse” approach to feeding during the day with scheduled feedings first thing in the morning and at bedtime. A couple of weeks ago, I cut out the morning feed.  Now, they are usually just feeding at bedtime, though sometimes if I’ve been working all day and dinner is going to be later, I feed them to address both their hunger and need for mommy-time.

I’ve been convinced for a while that R is ready to wean. She is most interested in breastfeeding when her sister is doing it. She does not initiate or expect to feed nearly as often as her sister. When I cut out their morning feedings and went straight from bed to breakfast, and she didn’t even fuss. In the afternoon, I can distract her with tickles or by looking out the window.  At bedtime, she is often too distracted to really feed.  She is more interested in what her sister and brother are doing, or in watching the ceiling fan, or “honking” my nose.  After two or three interruptions in as many minutes, I give her a hug and kiss and put her to bed.

My other girl, S, is on her own weaning schedule. When I started the “don’t offer, don’t refuse” approach, she was wanting to feed on the same schedule as before (after meals, before and after nap, in morning and at bedtime, at least). She comes looking to breastfeed way more often than her sister, and she is hard to distract. When I cut out the morning feeding, for a few days, I had to sneak in and take her to the other room to feed her before R woke up because she was so upset about not eating.  Even after a couple of weeks, she still wants milk first thing in the morning, though I’m not feeding her. When she sees me after a day of work, she wants to feed and a bedtime, she feeds without interruptions, and often asks for “more.”

I was hoping to phase out evening feeds in the next week or so, but I don’t see that happening. S is still very much interested in breastfeeding and R wants the same attention as her sister.  With their big brother, we changed his bedtime routine so Daddy put him to bed with a story instead of breastfeeding with me.  But, our schedule right now won’t support that change. So, unless the girls wean themselves, I think we’ll continue like this for another month or so.

How did you wean your children?  Did they wean at the same time? If not, how did you deal with it?

The Weaning Chronicles

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When the time came for me to wean my twosome, the challenge was twofold: emotional and physical. There were the regular ups and down of leaving behind their infancy and their total dependence on me, and at times I was weepy and sad. But what was even harder was figuring out how to wean. There is lots of information out there for dropping nursing sessions, but that wasn’t really my issue. From 4 months on, I had been exclusively pumping for my son (who just up and quit nursing seemingly overnight), and nursing my daughter or pumping bottles for her too.  Needless to say, I was a pumping pro, and my body was accustomed to producing a certain amount of milk EVERY DAY. Some day, someone might google “weaning from pump,” so I thought I would share my experience, in the hopes that it might help another mom. Here are my notes I kept for that very purpose:

Week 1:3 bottles breastmilk, 1 sippy cup of breastmilk

Week 2:3 bottles of breastmilk, 1 cup of whole milk; replace afternoon bottle with whole milk, drop afternoon pumping

Week 2, Day 3: develop ENORMOUS baseball sized plugged duct. Massage, hot compresses, pump. Up at 4 am, massage, hot compresses, pump. Dislodge plug. Lesson learned. Dropping the afternoon pumping was too drastic.

Week 2, Day 4: pump in morning, pump for 5 minutes in afternoon, pump at night. See decrease in supply.

Week 2, Day 5: pump in morning and evening, see decrease in supply.

Week 3:Kids are on 2 bottle of breastmilk, 2 cups of whole milk

Feeling anxious, nervous, guilty, unsure; Confusing in my mind to go from doing everything possible to make as much milk as possible to seeing the amount being pumped go down and down…stopping the pump before 3rd letdown…recognizing that the amt of food I desire is decreasing. Does seem lovely and natural to no longer be pumping in afternoon

Haven’t nursed Faith in days…feeling okay about that…our memorable last nursing was a Saturday morning…she was being sweet, drank her fill and then started playing…have occasionally offered to her, but she isn’t interested…

Mother’s Day is tomorrow…feeling weepy and sentimental, wondering if I nursed F for the last time…

Week 4:Feeling content, relieved, not too guilty, proud of our year. Gradually decreasing amount of time pumping in morning and evening. Kids are on 1 bottle of breastmilk, 3 cups of whole milk.

Had a revelation in Target…they finished their sippy cups of milk, and I realized that I could BUY them more milk! I didn’t need to rush home, or worry, or plan 20 steps ahead…very freeing! Amount of milk in my breasts decreasing…no issues of discomfort…

Week 5: Once I had completely weaned from pumping and nursing Faith, I went three days with out pumping/nursing and my breasts gradually filled up with milk to the point that I was quite uncomfortable. However, I rode it out, and the discomfort only lasted two days, and then I dried up quite quickly.

Becoming a pump free family has been a very nice change for us.  It was time, and I am grateful that it worked for us to give the kids breastmilk for a year.  I am thankful to have my body back, but I was very disheartened to see my DD+ shrink to barely a B in one month. I also have had some issues with weight gain. I really tried to cut back on my calories, and become more aware of my intake, but within days of totally weaning, I had gained NINE pounds. Several of those pounds came back of, and it may be more related to having PCOS, but it was very discouraging and made me want to hook my self back up to my milking machine!

Weaning twins at a year

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Do you see the teeth?Weaning twins. I had been dreading it for months. I’d heard stories of people still breastfeeding their twins months after they were planning to quit, because the babies just weren’t ready to stop. That’s fine for other people, but by 12 months, I was done with breastfeeding. I was glad I did it, thrilled I could do it for my kids…and so, so ready to have my body back. We went to a wedding out of town….and I took my breastpump. Blech. I had to work in the evening…and needed to make sure I’d put the kids down before I left, since they were still breastfeeding. I had to teach a class, right in the middle of the day. Out comes the breast pump again. Oh, and my favorite, Danny (finally) got teeth….hmmm…biting. Always fun.

So, I decided at nine months that we were going to prepare to stop at around a year. Keep in mind that while we were no longer BFing at night at that point, my kids were eating about SIX times a day. Yeah. All the time. We did first thing in the morning, 8:30am, 12pm, 2:30-3:30pm, 5:30pm and bedtime (6:30pm). Yeah, it was a bit out of control. But, it worked for us, and it worked around nap schedules, babysitter schedules and sleep in days (ahh, Sunday is my day!). So, at the nine month appointment I asked the pedi how often they should BF at a year. She said four times, then, when they turn a year, it can be none. Huh. In one day? This made no sense to me. Her advice on weaning….just stop on their first birthday. Cold turkey. Huh. HUH. Was she crazy??!!! Anyone who has BF (or has half a brain) can imagine what that scenerio would be like. Happy first birthday kiddos—-let’s enjoy a week of screaming while Mommy’s breasts explode. Hmmm. No, thanks.

So, we came up with our own plan. Over the next three months, we slowly dropped from six feedings to four. First, we dropped the 5:30pm. Then, if we were out and busy at a feeding time, we might skip it unless the kids fussed. We then dropped the 8:30am one. So we were down to 5:30am, 12pm, 3:30pm & 6:30pm. On babysitter days, IAbigail finds solid foods more exciting than breastfeeding. Hmm, watermelon! got back at 12:30pm. So, those days, they were ok going a little longer. On days when I had class, I’d be gone until 2pm. So, we started skipping the 12pm on those days. A couple of weeks before they turned 1, they seemed ready to drop the 3:30pm—already, if we were out and doing stuff, they weren’t interested in eating. So I scheduled a bunch of things in the afternoon one week, and we went out playing instead of eating. They did fine. A week or two later, an interesting thing happened. We were down to three regular feedings a day (the pediatrician had said four, but this was only a couple of weeks before they turned one, so I figured they’d be ok—besides, she had honestly lost a little legitimacy after the whole “stop cold turkey” idea. I mean, really). Anyway, one day Danny didn’t really want to nurse at 12pm . Or at 6:30. I pushed the 6:30 one. After a lot of work, he did eat a bit. The next night, the same thing. I pushed more, he bit, we stopped. After a few days where he really didn’t want to eat except in the morning, I came to the realization that he would be one in three days. THREE DAYS. What was I doing?! Did I want him to realize how much he liked nursing. Um, no. So, i went out and bought some whole milk and new sippies. They liked the milk. A lot. I stopped feeding Danny except in the am.

A few days later, I stopped feeding Abigail at 12pm as well. We would have some fussies at that time, but some lunch and a nap fixed that, and she’d wake up her usual happy self. We continued on like this for a few weeks, while I waited for Abigail to lose interest. Hmmm. Not so much. I tried dropping the evening and she cried and cried in her crib. I fed her. We then went to plan #2, dropping the morning. We did Danny first. my husband got himSo much fun at a Memorial Day picnic from him crib, took him downstairs, offered a sippy with milk. No problem. A few days later, it was Abigail’s turn. Again, my husband got her while I showered. Again, no problem. A bit more crying from Abigail than from Danny, but she was ok. That week she skipped the night feeding twice–once when she fell asleep on the way home from and evening pediatrician appointment (ear infection #4—wasn’t breastfeeding supposed to prevent that??!!) and another time when she was super tired. Finally, when she turned 13 months, we got home from an out of town trip and said, “That’s it!”. My husband put her to bed with her story instead of me (I did Danny). We listened. We waited. She went to sleep.

It was odd how anti-climactic it was. I didn’t even realize that last night, that it would be our last time breastfeeding. Do I miss it? No, I was ready. Am a honestly a bit sad at how easily they dropped it? Yep. But I’m more relieved than sad. Now, three weeks later, we are breastfeeding-free! And, the benefits of weaning as gradually as I did—-no engorgement, no pumping, no mastitis (which I did get three times in the first nine months). It was easy and painless. And, when I go out of town this weekend without babies (grandmothers are fantastic!), I don’t have to lug the breastpump.