I just wanted to give a shout out to Carrie of Tubeless in Seattle — she just posted a summery of her efforts to breastfeed her triplets and woo, I am impressed! Sounds like she is doing great! Yay, Carrie!
I feel like there is such a lack of knowledge, understanding and support for nursing multiples (as well as birthing multiples, but thats a topic for another post!). There can be so many obstacles early on, particularly if the babies are preemies. The time factor with twins or more is huge. Since breastfeeding is such a private, behind doors and wraps thing in our culture, I think going in many new mothers (me included!) have no idea how much TIME it can take in the early months, even with an efficient nurser or decent milk supply. Its a big shock to realize how much of your life is about nursing for awhile there! Add a second or third baby and its quite overwhelming! But it is often so possible. I think the “tribe” support is key — which I was so lucky and thankful to have. I am positive I could not have managed a toddler and nursing twins if it were not for my support crew. Thanks everyone!
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Thank you so much for the shout out! I am so touched that you are cheering for me.
As you say, it takes a village, or a tribe, to make this work and I feel so lucky. After the fog lifts we should totally start an LLL for multiples! I would love it- there are so many unique challenges and chances to support each other.
Thanks again- and can I email you sometime about how you got finished with the supplements? Or did they continue? Just looking for some stories. Did you write a post about it?
Thanks so much- and hope your three precious babes are great while cooped up in our rainy gloom!
I have exclusively breastfed my twins and I felt like all I did from the first three months was nurse! I literally would sit on the couch all day and only get up to refill my waterbottle. I think I peed once a day because I was just nursing so much! Now that my babies are ten months old, I look back on those months with a lot of wonder and pride. It was really hard but it was so worth it. I agree that there definitely needs to be more support for breastfeeding mothers of multiples!
Carrie — yes, definitely email me (email is in my about section)! I kept meaning to email you and then realized I don’t think I know how to. I did supplement for a long time — 9 months or so, due to my low milk supply. I went back and didn’t see any posts about the bottle weaning, sadly – I was not posting as much back then because life was so crazy for awhile there!