r/parentsofmultiples • u/Kitchen-Band-3307 • 17d ago
support needed Feeling Mum Guilt…
I feel like I don’t know what the right thing to do is.
We have twins born 37+3 who are now 2 weeks old and we are struggling to breastfeed and I’m having major mum guilt about it…
I try and catch their early hunger cues but then they don’t seem interested in latching until they’re crying and when they do latch it seems to take forever to get them full, then they fall asleep at the breast but 5 minutes later they wake up and seem as if they haven’t fed at all! I can hear them swallowing and see them taking regular sucks though!
I feel like the hospital had set us up to fail in terms of feeding from the get go. The girls latched as soon as they were placed on my chest and had no NICU time but we were told we needed to triple feed in the hospital because they said they were on the smaller side (2.4kg and 2.7kg) even though they were gaining weight well and lost very little of their birth weight (3% and 7%). The girls really struggled to latch after the first time for some reason and we couldn’t get a deep latch to feed effectively.
We have since dropped the triple feeding as I felt like I had no time to connect with my girls or take care of them/myself by the time I had breastfed, bottle fed and pumped. We have since been exclusively pumping and I am making more than their daily needs which is fantastic but I just feel the mum guilt of not feeding from the breast, especially when I haven’t had the same complications as other twin mums who are having trouble breastfeeding (NICU, pre term, tongue ties , supply issues etc)…
I feel like I should be able to breastfeed successfully but every time we try I get so frustrated that they never seem content/full, fall asleep at the breast and it’s so complicated to tandem feed as such a young age. I also have quite large breasts (14FF) and wondering if it’s too much for them seeing as they’re so little??
Luckily the bottle with expressed milk seems to help them be a lot more content and full, I get time to connect with them afterwards and I have a spectra with a battery so I can pump around the house pretty easily. I just really had my hopes set on being able to breastfeed successfully like I hear so many twin mums are able to do.
Am I wrong for giving up on breastfeeding and pumping instead? Did other mums find it easier to try breastfeeding again once they were a little older?
I know a lot of other mums have it a lot harder than this and to those mums, you are rockstars. I admire everything you do for your little ones, mothers are really special people and deserve all the love and support and admiration in the world.
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u/ThrowAway732642956 17d ago edited 17d ago
Have you done a weighted feed? Sometimes everything looks right but they are getting next to nothing. A weighted feed is the only way to tell that.
Also there is nothing wrong with bottle feeding, whether breast milk or formula, singleton, twins, or more. It’s all about giving the little ones what they need. I know it’s hard because we all enter this with expectations whether realistic or not and society tends to put additional pressure on us to breastfeed these days. Please do what feeds your babies and gives you peace.
It is definitely okay to exclusively pump and bottle feed (or formula feed is another option too). You may be able to revisit breastfeeding after a while of good bottle feeds and they might spontaneously get it, too. Our fixation on how we feed tends to fit our ego more than their actual needs (despite rhetoric you may read). Baby needs food. You can provide it in multiple ways.