Tandem Nursing

The babies and I have met another breastfeeding goal, just in time for their 2 month birthday - we are getting better at tandem (two at a time) nursing! As with many other things, conditions have to be just right for it to work. There have to be 2 hungry babies who are still reasonably happy and willing to nurse(not hysterically hungry and demanding the instant gratification of bottles), I have to have the right pillows and seating available and have time to get it set up, and the third baby has to be sleeping or otherwise taken care of. My EZ2Nurse twin nursing pillow is coming in handy, as it holds 2 babies much better than a boppy pillow. I usually put a small throw pillow under each side of the nursing pillow for extra height (I really need a nursing stool to prop my feet up on!) and sit on the couch so I have lots of room.

The main problems I've had involve the third baby - one day I was home alone and thought Zoey was sleeping peacefully while I nursed Lucas and Abby. Well, she did not stay asleep. I had to decide whether to listen to her cry, or whether to stop nursing to get her. I decided on the 2nd option, and then had to get everyone settled again. From now on I will always make sure the 3rd baby is within reach if I'm home alone and tandem feeding! My next goal is to be able to nurse 2 while bottle feeding the third. Talk about efficiency! :)

Here is a picture of Abby and Lucas passed out and happy after tandem feeding:


The other challenge when home alone is dealing with fussy babies while I'm pumping. Again, I have to decide whether to stop pumping to deal with babies, or let them fuss for a bit. I usually end up holding whichever babies are unhappy. The other day I had to hold both Zoey and Abby. Here's a picture of how they ended up sleeping once I got up from the chair:


In sleep news, some days are still better than others. The last few days the babies have fallen into a pattern of having a late night feeding (around 11pm-12am), then one middle of the night feeding (around 3am-5am) and then a breakfast feeding (around 7-8am). They have also been ready to eat closer together, rather than spreading out their wake-up times across the night. We've worked hard on making sure they all get that late night feeding around the same time so that the remaining feedings are not as staggered as they used to be - that way I can get them all fed in a 1.5-2 hour time frame instead of being up every hour. This is a big improvement over the eating every 3 hours pattern - it used to be 11pm, 2am, 5am, 8am - and I was doing the last 3 of those so Jason could get some sleep for work. I'm hoping this trend continues - it's nice to only be up for 2 hours in the middle of the night! (and you can see how I'm using my time waiting for Abby to wake up...)