With babies, feeding is a sizeable portion of their awake time. Caregivers easily spend a total of between 80 - 200 mins daily feeding babies in their first six months. It easy to envisage doubling this number when there are two babies involved unless the caregiver learns the tricks of feeding twins together.
I used to think I'd want to feed the twins one at a time so that I could have one-on-one cuddle time with them. I do that with their early morning (5am) feed, but with the daytime feedings, I just have to feed them together. Babies eat every 2-4 hours and will spend an average of 15 mins on a meal; so do the maths. To ensure I didn't spend every waking moment on baby food related activities, here's what worked for me in feeding the twins together
Breastfeeding Twins Together
Yes, I was actually able to do this a few times. I felt so gangsta about it, I would have patted myself on the back if I didn't have a baby in each hand. Anyways, here's what I found most useful for doing this:
The book Mothering Multiples by Karen Kerkhoff Gromada
. This is a La Leche League book and is focused on breastfeeding. It's most useful for the chapter on positioning the babies for feeding together. Not useful to me was the EZ 2 Nurse pillow
. I found it too unwieldy and ended up using normal sleeping pillows or the boppy pillow
Bottle Feeding Twins Together
I didn't have to do this until the girls were over 3 months old. The main trick is to find a way of positioning the babies at an incline for feeding. I use their bouncers
for this. The babies are on the bouncer and I sit on the floor between them with my back resting against the sofa. The back rest is a big one
Solids Feeding Twins Together
Two highchairs
or bumbos
for babies and a sectioned bowl
. I feed both babies out of the same bowl. I started using the divided bowl so I can monitor how much each baby was eating.
Next stop, self-feeding and mommy moves out of the picture
I used to think I'd want to feed the twins one at a time so that I could have one-on-one cuddle time with them. I do that with their early morning (5am) feed, but with the daytime feedings, I just have to feed them together. Babies eat every 2-4 hours and will spend an average of 15 mins on a meal; so do the maths. To ensure I didn't spend every waking moment on baby food related activities, here's what worked for me in feeding the twins together
Breastfeeding Twins Together
Yes, I was actually able to do this a few times. I felt so gangsta about it, I would have patted myself on the back if I didn't have a baby in each hand. Anyways, here's what I found most useful for doing this:
The book Mothering Multiples by Karen Kerkhoff Gromada
. This is a La Leche League book and is focused on breastfeeding. It's most useful for the chapter on positioning the babies for feeding together. Not useful to me was the EZ 2 Nurse pillow. I found it too unwieldy and ended up using normal sleeping pillows or the boppy pillowBottle Feeding Twins Together
I didn't have to do this until the girls were over 3 months old. The main trick is to find a way of positioning the babies at an incline for feeding. I use their bouncers
for this. The babies are on the bouncer and I sit on the floor between them with my back resting against the sofa. The back rest is a big oneSolids Feeding Twins Together
Two highchairs
or bumbos for babies and a sectioned bowl. I feed both babies out of the same bowl. I started using the divided bowl so I can monitor how much each baby was eating. Next stop, self-feeding and mommy moves out of the picture
