Joan wrote (hi, Joan!)

> When I had my twins 4 1/2 years ago, this came up for me as well - I had
> babies with extremely different appetites - one ate short frequent small
> meals and one ate long large meals.
>
One of the things I like in Karen K.G's book is that she suggests is
that the decision to feed together or separately, assign one breast per
feed, per day (as many mothers choose to do) or permanently, depends on
a number of factors. Joan has explained what her choice was based on.
Sometimes it is the baby's choice -- to my knowledge, Karen is the only
one who has written this in the literature, and I love to include it in
my conversations with mothers of multiples. As you might expect,
children's needs and preferences evolve, and in the case of twins, the
flip-flop we talk about (in terms of personality traits, neediness,
etc.) can be physical as well as emotional. A twin who starts off
needing a certain breast with its own unique shape, supply and flow may
find the other more appropriate later. Or not. In the case of my first
set, there was a dominant twin who chose the breast, the timing and the
durations of the feed and the right moment for weaning. As expected,
"her" breast was hers for more than a day or two. In the case of the
second, who didn't adjust to simultaneous feeds after a long period of
intense individual training, switching wasn't an issue. One continued to
feed frequently into late toddlerhood and the other one weaned much more
gradually. If they had each had a favourite breast, I would have ended
up in much the same situation as many mothers nursing toddlers on one
breast only, but I am sure the lopsidedness would have gone away once my
breasts had shrunk to their crone size.
Jo-Anne Elder-Gomes, IBCLC, but more importantly, mother of 2 X 2 + 3.

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