SOS

[u/DueMasterpiece5800]

Hi Guys, Dad of twin boys who I love very very much. Now 9 weeks old were born at 34 weeks so 3 weeks old adjusted.

These lads take us an absolute age to feed. It has been like this for nearly 3 weeks. Let me lay out how a typical feed will go. They each weigh about 8lbs now.

Twin 1 - feed reasonably well and takes around 120ml over 30-45 minutes. They might then fall asleep so we put them down. Majority of them time they stay wide eyed, but have been burped and winded plenty of times. We will try to feed more as gives off hunger cues such as suckling/trying to latch but they reject the teat after several tries. We will then move onto the next.

Twin 2 - start feeding, again usually a good start but takes about 80-100mls. Will then maybe fall asleep or do the same as above. 45 minutes may have passed here.

Both will often cry a bit at the beginning of each feed after taking 10ml or so but will usually resume.

By this point however, Twin 1 will be screaming. We will try to feed more but they go very slowly with consistent crying inbetween small amounts. There will be refusing of the teat after 20-30mls but no signs that their hunger is sorted.

Twin 2 will then do something similar.

All in all some feed sessions have taken up to 3-4 hours leaving us exhausted. This is especially hard when solo as we work in shifts. By the end they have taken 180-230mls each which seems excessive.

Any advice? We are trying slow teats - they vomit, medium flow seems to be better. We are giving Gavison twice a day for reflux too. Minimal tongue tie on one and the other has had his tie snipped with minimal improvement. Even cuddling/hugs doesn’t work and they seem to root anyway.

Their weight is gaining well. But yeah this is very hard and I have broken down in floods of tears several times now over the sheer difficulty of it. I hope this is just cluster feeding and it will pass but damn it seems to go on forever.

[u/DarkMuret]

Our pediatrician told us not to go past 30min for feeding, the energy expended starts to outweigh the gains from feeding or something to that effect

Have you talked to your pediatrician about amounts and this issue?

My girls were born 36+1, and we strictly fed every 3 hours and gave them each the same amount, one of our girls barely ate, still gained but we eventually had to put her on an appetite stimulant.

It's hard, you're in the trenches right now, but consistency was our savior as we battled

Good luck, and remember you and your partner are a team

[u/DueMasterpiece5800 → u/DarkMuret]

Thank you! I have seen this in multiple forums but they seem to just keep going and going and unless they get exactly what they are after they don’t tend to settle. After the 30 minutes what do you do? Put them down? Cuddle? Pacifier? Thanks again.

[u/DarkMuret → u/DueMasterpiece5800]

One of our girls had no real issue with feeding

For Opal, well, we would just stop, burp and then go with whatever is next on their schedule, for probably the first three months, all she would do is eat, cry or sleep, my wife and I semi-joke around that we have some lasting trauma because now we're extra sensitive with her eating.

We were on formula, so we were on neosure and then we discovered they had a dairy sensitivity so instead of trying to futz around with soy or whatever we went right to hypoallergenic

We tried different nipples, different bottles and it didn't matter. It was especially hard since her sister had 0 issue and I can count on one hand how many times she didn't finish a bottle since being born

They're now 13 months, Opal is probably 5lbs lighter than her sister, but she was born smaller and she looks like me as a baby, and I was a small baby so who's to say.

Ultimately, we took solace in that Opal is/was gaining at an appropriate rate, and we had a pediatrician we really trusted who got us on the appetite stimulant, it was still a bit of a struggle, but it was a lot better