I have good news. After the newborn stage, combo-feeding gets a bit easier with twins.
By 4 months, you’ve probably mastered tandem nursing and are well into the prop-to-bottle phase. Soon enough, your babes will hold their own bottles while you gaze lovingly at them, sipping your hopefully hot coffee.
I’ll go ahead and skip our brief (albeit memorable) learning experience attempting to exclusively breastfeed after combo-feeding for four months and refer you to the posts below to save time.
I would also have continued business as usual through month four had I not attempted to drop formula.
Adapt and Adjust
After our short bout with exclusively breastfeeding, I had to evaluate how I was going to reintegrate formula back into our routine.
I took the total amount of recommended daily ounces of formula and subtracted what I guesstimated I was producing to get the number of ounces of formula I needed, which was sixteen.
Paying more attention to my supply, I noticed a severe drop in production as the day went on. Rather than evenly distribute the ounces, I would increase the amount as the day went on to make up the difference.
My boys started sleeping through the night during this time which left me fuller than usual in the mornings. It opened up an opportunity to continue exclusively breastfeeding, even if just for one feeding.
Our new normal
My Twin-Z tandem nursing pillow started getting a lot more action around month five.
Additionally, our Brezza had more than paid itself off by now.
Other than the first feeding of the day, which was only breastfeeding, I would start by making the boys’ bottles in the Brezza so I had them ready to go. With the adjustable temperature, I’d make them as hot as possible so they were still warm by the time the boys were ready for them.
I did most of my nursing on the floor because it was easier to lay the boys on the ground, strap myself in, and get them settled one at a time.
Once done, I propped them up to give them their bottles, which I held until they were able to do that themselves.
bye bye breast pump
Relaxing into the new routine, I was less worried about my milk production. This meant pumping to produce wasn’t needed anymore.
I paired down my pumping to twice a day and offered nursing on demand instead.
I pumped first thing in the morning to alleviate engorgement and just before bed. Once my supply adjusted, I retired my Spectra and never looked back.
Trial and error is going to be your bread and butter when it comes to combo-feeding. There’s no one size fits all and this is just one twin mom’s experience.
With the introduction of solids, combo-feeding became a bit more complicated and a natural progression into weaning started.
You can read all about how we handled it in the next post.
