Heya girls

Tobias and Indigo are 5 weeks old today and they have been on the bottle for 2 weeks tomorrow.

They are on karicare newborn atm.. It seems to agree with them... Slight constipation. Didn't agree with S26 gold.

Tobias drinks between 100-150mls.

Indigo drinks between 90-130mls.

They generally go 3 hours during the day...sometimes 4.

Night they go 4-5hourly

What I want to ask is.... Would you let them sleep? Or wake them up after 3 hrs during the day?

Could 1 twin want more.. Than the other? For example Tobias pretty much will wake up 3 hrly during the day.. But Indigo will go 4 hrs if I let her. But the only problem I can see with that is the over night feeds..might blow out..I would rather have a 15-20 min gap between feeds at night time...Less juggling lol

I hope that makes since lol..

Any advice would be great.

Kat

I always demand bottle fed my twins. When one would wake for a feed I would feed her and then wake her sister and feed her even if she hadn't stirred. I was not going to do one feed and then another 1 hour later and then end up staggering all the feeds and only getting a very short break in between. I found this worked well with us and we had a similar thing that one twin needed alot less formula than the other and I probably wasted alot of formula in the beginning as I made all the bottles up for the same amount but in the end it really did work.

Cheers
Robyn

I was told when under 3kgs feed 3 hourly in day (I is still under isn't she?)

My boys ended up on different formulas due to constitutional differences... Karicare Gold made one of them way too 'loose' so we changed to Heinz Nurture Gold for him... left the other one though because HE got too constipated on anything else... aauugghh!

I always used to demand feed at that age... but it ended up being about every 3 to 4 hours anyway.

Tobias is 4.2kgs lol and Indigo is 3.8kgs.

They have 6 bottles a day.. Or 7 depending how early that first feed is.

The tin says 1-2months 150ml 5-6 bottles a day.

I demand fed mine at that stage. One was bigger and could go a bit longer and the little one was a bit more often. I stopped waking them up 3 hourly about a week after we got home. I demand fed at night as well though. Z might only wake once and N twice. I did rollover feeds as well once I went to bed.

I don't remember ever waking a sleeping baby during the night. If one was due to wake up soon though I would make his bottle as well, a bit warmer and leave it in the bottle bag beside the bed. Less awake time for me..

Ours were in bassinets and DH and I had a baby each at night. We each fed our "own" baby so noone was too sleep deprived as we have 5 kids as well.

I hope it is all going ok. I have been following your posts and your other kids are younger than mine were.
Call in the MCHN before your mum goes home and tell her you need home help. I got 6 weeks worth of a cleaning lady and it was brilliant!

I would try to push Indigo to have a bit more at each feed even 5 ml each feed over a couple of days..may reduce the 3 hourly feeds.

Hi Kathreen. My twins, Henry and Georgiana are only a week younger than Tobias and Indigo. I'm comp feeding at the moment (was admitted to hospital over the weekend with mastitis... fun) so the amount they feed depends on whether they are getting EBM or formula.

During the day, they are going four hours between feeds and at night, they are stretching to five hours. Henry is 4.8kgs (yes, he's massive! He was 4kgs at birth) and Georgiana is 3.3kgs (2.5kgs at birth). I am working on the stretch being overnight at the moment as I don't mind feeding them more often during the day if it means I can sleep at night!! For example, I have found that they will often only go 3 hours after the early morning feed (having gone 5 - 5.5 hours before) and I don't mind as I've had a decent rest!

Henry will easily down 130 - 150ml of EBM and for formula (NAN HA Gold) he will want 150 - 180ml (depending on the feed time eg. after 5 hours he will want more). Georgiana will take 110 - 120ml of EBM and sometimes struggles a bit with 120ml formula.

Are you expressing at all? My Paed gave me a formula for figuring out how much EBM they should have each day. 150 - 180ml x kg/ day. So for Henry, I've worked out 180ml x 4.8kg = 864ml/ day over 6 feeds = 144ml.

It's so hard figuring it all out! If one wakes, I wake the other. At the moment, Henry is the one who will wake 90% of the time so Georgiana gets woken up. That said, we've been dealing with bad reflux with her (has now been put on Zantac) and she is awake a lot longer than Henry so when she is finally settled, he's ready to wake up!

Aprilfinch- hehe both our boys are fatty bombars lol.

They totally formula fed now. I got mastitis 2 weeks ago.. Which was the icing on the cake for breastfeeding. I write down all their feeds etc..and worked out I was breastfeeding for up to 14 hours a day which is hard.. with 3 other children.. the oldest being 5.5yrs old.

Kathreen, I bottle feed and I used to wake the sleeping one to feed at the same time as the hungry one - Im not sure if it helped, but they got into a decent (but flexible) routine pretty early so I assume thats part of it.

Mine still feed every 3 hours during the day, but the difference now is that they sleep through the night, so virtually no night feeds (unless someone is obviously hungry). and there are some solids meals in there too.

My reason was fairly selfish - I didnt want to be feeding one, then an hour later, the other, then having to feed the first one again. It seemed to work well, and they were pretty good by about 4 mths.

That's not selfish, that's survival!

I think my girls were a good 3+ months before they would drink 120mls or more - I would offer what they want, if they didn't want more, burp and reoffer again.

(Don't know why I thought Indi was 2.8kgs - lack of sleep today from Eclipse last night).

I have no advice Kathreen - just wanted to say OMG! You are doing so well with their weight gains!! They have really caught up! I bet they look totally different now. (that's a hint for more photos when you have time).

Lol steggles.. That's coz I wrote Indi was 2.8kgs in my status on fb... Instead of 3.8kg's hehe
so.. No.. Your not crazy hehe.


FW- yes... They have really stacked it on. Just about out of newborn nappies... I still have like 10 boxes lol.. Thinking I would have gone through a heap more haha. Also need to start thinking about getting some 000 suits for Tobias lol.

More photos... Will try and see how I go taking some professional ones on the weekend... If I have time.


I will continue to just wake up the sleeping twin. In reality... It seems pretty silly not to. They are in a pretty good routine.. Why change it.

xxxx

thanks girls

if they go down roughly the same time, have had a decent sleep then it's up to you. Whatever is easier...my babies didn't mind being woken up as long as they were woken up for a feed. They would be really content after a feed. I always tried to give them 1.5 hr sleep even if it meant constant resettling.

I usually wait about 5 to 10mins to get the other one up..max 30 mins. It takes me 5mins to set one up in the rocker anyway, then I quickly pick the other twin up and sit in the middle feeding them.

Speaking from experience learnt the hard way, I would wake the sleeping twin so they are feeding at the same time (or one straight after the other). Breast or bottle, it makes life so much easier if your downtime from twin 1 is not interrupted half way through by twin 2!

Kathreen, if it's working for you now, then don't mess with it! Whenever I found something that worked for my two, I refused to change it until they did. I was exclusively bottle-feeding my two at that age (but they were having EBM solely from the bottles) and I always woke the other twin for a feed. In fact, I think I continued to wake the other for a feed even after I had them on the breast (which was at 14 weeks). I probably did it until they were at least 6 months old (I can't really remember - that first year is still a blur of sleep deprivation, screaming, vomiting, pooing and feeding to me). But my smaller twin was the one who wouldn't wake for a feed, so I knew he needed it more than his brother anyway IYKWIM.

Oh man, I was such a nazi about feeding them both at the same time. And about not going over 3hrly between day time feeds.

In hindsight, I would still do the feeding at the same time thing but (given yours are gaining weight well now) I would only wake for 3hrly if they'd been asleep forever (like 2hrs already - we were still sorting night from day at that age) or if they hadn't fed well at the last feed. Other than that I'd probably let them stretch to 3.5hrly or if they'd had a really bad one and only just gone off to sleep, I'd leave it go 4hrly. If one of them had not been asleep as long I'd leave them go until I had finished the first one's feed and then wake.