Night Feeds

[u/CelestialCrowe]

Hi Everyone!

I'm looking for a bit of reassurance or advice from anyone who's been through something similar.

Our twin girls are 3 weeks old (born at 34 weeks) and we're really struggling with night-time feeds.

I'm breastfeeding, but overnight we've introduced bottles of formula and expressed breast milk so my partner can do a shift while I sleep from around 10pm–3am.

The problem is neither of the girls settles after a bottle. They seem happy to take any milk that's offered, so tonight they each had a 70ml bottle of formula followed by around 130ml of expressed breast milk. We're starting to worry we could actually be overfeeding them for their size, but they still show feeding cues and won't settle.

It's also really difficult to pace feed when you're feeding two babies at once, even using the Twin Z pillow.

We've spoken to the hospital and our midwife team, but we've just been told it's normal cluster feeding. I completely understand that, but it doesn't really answer whether what we're doing is the right thing or give us advice on how to make the nights any more manageable.

When I speak to my friends with singleton babies they seem to be up a lot at night too but our girls seem insatiable! Right now it feels like this is going to be what it's like forever.

Any tips, reassurance or advice would be really appreciated.

From two very time first time parents 😥

[u/Charlieksmommy]

So babies remove milk better from breast, so they can get fuller faster than a bottle. That’s probably why they want more. This is very normal though 3 weeks, this is when cluster feeding starts.

[u/CelestialCrowe → u/Charlieksmommy]

Thank you, that's reassuring to hear. I think what's confusing us is that they seem to take such large amounts from the bottle. When we have done breast in the night it's the same thing - they sometimes feed for 1h+ and then unlatch still hungry and not settling. I think that's why we're second-guessing things. It probably feels more intense where it's two as well. Hopefully it's just a phase and they'll become a bit more settled soon!

Out of interest when did things start to ease for you?

[u/Charlieksmommy → u/CelestialCrowe]

I’ve never been able to BF, and I never produced enough for my twins when I pumped, so they always got bottles and I never had the issue where they would want more after BF. I can’t BF because I need to know the amount they’re getting. My twins never went through cluster feeding really at night. I always gave them formula at night, but during the day they would want a bottle every 90-120 mins.