I am attempting to induce lactation and have made VERY SLOW progress. After 8 weeks of pumping, I'm up to only 4 oz per day, which means that the flow from my breast is basically still drops, with the occasional spray.
I have twins via surrogacy who were born preemie, and have been mostly bottle fed. When I use the SNS with them in the past, their suck was too weak to get much, and in the beginning would only get a few mL after lots of sucking, so I didn't use it much because I felt so bad tiring them out so much.
Now, they are approaching their term date and are much stronger. One of them even took his whole feeding via SNS for the first time yesterday.
However, my challenge is this -- taking care of twins is so hard, I am rarely up to challenge of using the SNS. One of my babies is an especially fussy eater -- once he starts eating, it activates his whole digestive tract, and he starts passing a lot of gas. And, for this baby, passing gas means he wiggles, grunts, waves his arms, and sometimes cries. Putting this wiggling monster to the breast and getting him to latch on is no picnic.
Add to this the fact that they are used to bottle feeding and sometimes get frustrated by the slow flow from the SNS and start crying, PLUS the fact that I'm exhausted from the demands of caring for newborn twins -- all this means that I can only motivate myself to do it once per day.
I KNOW that this is a viscious cycle and that the more they nurse, the more easily they will be able to nurse, but I can't break out of it. Any pointers?
Thanks,
Nicole
Last edited by NicoleB; 02/06/10 09:10 PM.
