The Twinkies

A recent comment on the old post Breastfeeding Twins Tips was unimpressed with the advice to get a copy of Mothering Multiples and the EZ-2-Nurse Twins pillow. The guy noted that women all over the world throughout all of history have been nursing without books or special pillows so why throw in the extra expense.

It’s a fair question. Of course, most women now buy parenting and breastfeeding books so it doesn’t seem that odd to me to recommend one over another. And, to the best of my knowledge, Mothering Multiples is the only book on the market that covers twin-specific issues in detail. And there are twin-specific issues as well as issues that are just common nursing problems. I, at least, had no one I could ask. My mother didn’t nurse and certainly no one around me had any idea what to do with a kid who wouldn’t latch. My breastfeeding class stuck to “breastfeeding is SO NATURAL and all you have to do is put the baby to the breast and everything else will just work” script. I hate that script because it made me feel like a total failure when it wasn’t easy and it didn’t just work. Karen Gromada’s book helped me over several humps and without it I might have quit trying. Having someone, anyone, say “twins are harder to nurse than one baby and do the best you can each day and if you have to supplement so be it” kept me closer to sane than the message I was getting from the natural parenting community which was closer to “if you supplement you suck and are poisoning your baby with that toxic waste formula crap.”

I also recommend that pregnant women (and, indeed, everyone literate in English) read Having Faith which articulates better than any other book I have read the utter exhaustion that follows birth and the misery - I am failing as a mother, the author writes - when breastfeeding doesn’t come easily. Her book reassured me that my feelings were normal, that early problems were common and that ordinary women could manage to overcome them and go on to a multi-year nursing relationship. She also lays out the medical benefits of breastmilk and the environmental contaminants that threaten it in lyrical prose. It really is a fabulous book.

But now, oh gentle readers, I ask you what are YOUR tips for successfully nursing twins? If you nursed multiples what worked for you? What did not? And, because I am a pain, I am asking that you leave those tips not HERE on this post, which would be convenient, bit on the original twin tips post in order to keep it all together in one place.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 1:00 am and is filed under Breastfeeding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.