First Week Home!

Time really flies by when Mama is not sleeping 🙂 I do not have much time between feeding these days, but I wanted to do a quick post about how we survived our first week home!

What We Needed to Survive the First Week

1) Nana (my mom) — She has been a HUGE help this week! She gets up at all hours of the night to help me with the babies, averaging about 4 hours of sleep most nights. She has been running errands, grocery shopping, cooking meals for us and playing with Noah. She taught him how to ride his bike without training wheels this week!

2) Woombie swaddlers — We love them so much that we now have 6 of them! The Woobie is great because it zips up. The babies cannot kick free like in a receiving blanket “baby burrito.” It is also more convenient when you have to strip them down to their diaper for each feeding. It’s called a Woombie because they are snug like in the womb, but they can still move their arms and legs. Here is a picture of Noah holding the twins in their Woombies:

3) Twin Z Nursing Pillow — This has been great when trying to tandem feed the twins, which is about 50% of the time right now. I also have a single Boppy pillow to use when I am nursing one baby at a time.

4) Medela Pump-in- Style Advanced On-The-Go Tote — I am SO glad that I paid for the “upgrade” and got the pump that I used with Noah. Insurance only covered a starter version that did not have as many accessories. I paid $120 for this one and insurance paid the rest (so essentially half the cost of the pump.) Since the babies lost 10% of their birth weight before my milk came in, the pediatrician wanted me to supplement after each feeding. I had to pump after each feeding and feed them 1/2 an ounce from a bottle. We are slowly weaning them off the bottled milk, but I am still pumping to keep my supply up. Since Eli is a slow/lazy nurser, I want to make sure my body thinks I need to make enough milk to feed two babies. So far, I have been very lucky to have a good supply and we may need to invest in a second freezer to store the milk! I have about 50 ounces in our freezer already!

5) Avent Newborn Bottles — Like I mentioned above, we had to supplement with breast milk after each feeding. One of the pediatricians recommended that we use a syringe to feed them their supplement, so that they did not get nipple confusion between the bottle and the breast. After the first attempt with the syringe and Emry Jane choking on the milk, I decided I would take my chances with nipple confusion– we were using bottles! Mama couldn’t handle her baby choking! First, I tried the Medela bottles and nipples that I had with my pump. The flow was still too fast for Emry. We tried the Tippee Tommee bottles next because they supposedly have a “slow flow,” which was also too fast. Our third attempt worked great– the Avent newborn bottles! You can pinch the bottle nipple and it will stop the milk from dripping out to encourage the baby to suck.

6) Soothie Pacifiers — The first night in the hospital, I talked to our night nurse about not giving the babies pacifiers. After Eli’s very fussy second night in the hospital, we decided they could have pacifiers if it would help them through the carseat test. Since they were born at 36 weeks, they had to sit in their carseat in the nursery for 1.5 hours and prove they could keep their sats up before we could take them home. Eli is a huge fan of the pacifier. Emry Jane really only takes it when she is in her carseat or has the hiccups. The twins have adorable Wubbanubs but, right now, the Wubbanubs are too heavy for them to hold in their mouths.

7) Belly Bandit — I bought the Belly Bandit to help with all the extra skin post-babies. I do not enjoy the idea of people asking me “when I am due” when I have already had the twins! It has velcro on the side so that I can tighten it as I need to. Here is a picture of me right before delivery and then a picture of me with and without the band at 1 week post-partum:

I plan to get the birth story up on the blog soon before the mommy-amnesia takes over. Since it took me almost a full week to write our first week post, please be patient with me.