Bonnie's and Cathy's posts about tips for nursing twins were so great. I
have to agree with both of you on many of the ways you help moms with
newborn twins, particularly in initiating breastfeeding. I also suggest to
my twin moms that it may be easier to nurse each baby individually until
each one becomes really competent, before learning how to breastfeed them
simultaneously.
However, isn't it just so true that all of us have such very individual
experiences? Cathy wrote - about simultaneous nursing - " The main thing
against it, though, was that it was emotionally very difficult for me to pay
what felt like "proper" attention to them when I tried to do both at once.
It was indescribably uncomfortable to try to divide my "mother" energy - I
had no problem bonding with them individually, but it never felt like I was
attending to them the way my mother instincts urged me to do when I was
nursing them together. Do you know what I mean?"
My identical boys are now 16, and I have to tell you that for *years* I was
very bothered by the fact that all the twin info I ever read hinted darkly
at the possibility that one mother couldn't possibly "bond" with two babies
at once and, in my inexperience, I kept watching myself, looking for signs
that I was going to be a bad mother or was going to neglect one child or
inadvertently do some other awful thing to one or both of them. All my
instincts (actually it was a compulsion) told me *not* to follow the advice
of the twin books - ie *not* to foster the individuality thing - each time I
tried it it felt all wrong. So we kept the babies together in the same crib
as long as we could, and I dressed them exactly alike whenever possible (my
husband used to kid me that if I did this it didn't seem as if there were so
many of them!) and above all I took the greatest delight in nursing them
together as much as they could stand! My apologies to all mothers of
singletons on this list, but to emphasize just how wonderful I found the
whole thing, I actually feel sorry for anyone who has not had this
experience. Four eyes gazing adoringly at you and alternate babies breaking
off to give milky smiles consecutively or in stereo has to be the absolute
ultimate. I found it so easy to study one little ear and note the
differences or similarities of the other, to look from one baby to the
other, and to drink in the sight of both of them at once. One baby tucked
on each side felt *right* and even today double-cuddles/hugs are great.
Each mother's experience is her own. Some mothers will actively want to
savour time alone with each baby and others will prefer to nurse
simultaneously if they can swing it. With multiples the variety of
combinations increases. Each baby within the set of multiples will be
different and each unit of multiples will be different, somehow it seems as
if you have two babies, but there's an extra dimension, their twinness.
Cathy's experience just concurred so well with all that I have read about
multiples, that it reminded me of what guilt these books engendered in me 16
years ago, and what indignation I feel as a consequence now! With the
benefit of having lived this I'm becoming more than impatient with any
suggestion that twin mothers should deny themselves the unique pleasure that
can they can find in the twinness of their twins.
But the mind boggles at octuplets - now *there's* an experience!
Pamela Morrison IBCLC, Zimbabwe
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