I chose to Bottle Feed my Twins

Posted on May 7, 2011 by No Comments

My first Twins were started on formula as soon as they were born. I wasn’t able to sit upright on the day they were delivered due to the C-Section and therefore couldn’t feed them myself either by breast or bottle.

During the first couple of days in hospital whilst recovering from the C-Section, I needed help to feed them.  The hospital took both babies into the nursery at night time for the first two nights as I wasn’t able to manage alone.  My son would feed on demand every 2 hours and his twin sister wasn’t far behind.  We continued to bottle feed at home.

The recommendation is that each bottle should be made freshly for each feed.  This is not practical with Twins and I personally felt very nervous when there were only two bottles left in the fridge.  The bottles never stayed long in the fridge.  With newborn twins you can expect to feed on average 6-8 bottles per baby per day (24 hour period).

The steriliser was constantly on and I always made sure there was a batch of bottles made and stored in the fridge particularly in readiness for night feeds.  The last thing I wanted at night was to be rattling around the kitchen barely awake trying to organise a feed whilst the Twins were simultaneously waking the neighbours!

The other recommendation is not to heat bottles in the microwave.  Waiting for one bottle to warm in a bottle warmer and then a second just wasn’t practical and I switched to the micro very quickly!  Both my babies were real screamers for their milk.  If they were awake there might be a build up or a period of grumpiness because they were getting hungry in which I could organise myself.  However, if they were asleep and woke hungry then they switched from sleeping peacefully to screaming the house down within seconds.   I couldn’t carry them at the same time and pacify them whilst waiting for a bottle to be ready so I opted for the fastest method.

More often than not I was alone with my Twins so I had to find creative ways to feed them both at the same time.  I have heard stories of parents feeding them one at a time but there is no way on earth that would have worked with my Twins.  I would not have been able to choose who went first or listen to the other one cry during the process.  It would have made a normal challenging Twin feeding time into a completely miserable one.

Often I would use their car seats to feed them in.  This way I could sit on the floor in between each of them and hold a bottle in each hand.  If we were upstairs I would create a pillow prop on the bed and once again sit in between them holding both bottles in.  It was difficult when one baby finished their feed or stopped in the middle due to wind and often I propped the bottle up with a small pillow so one baby could continue to guzzle while the other one could be picked up and winded.  There are two things that I will say about Twins and Bottle Feeding.  Firstly, the learned to hold a bottle/beaker very early on out of sheer necessity and secondly enjoy the feeding times where you can sit and feed one baby comfortably in your chair whilst your twin feeding helper of the moment feeds your other Twin!