Ok, the last post in this series is about our experiences at home in the last few days.
In the childrens hospital they put us on a feeding schedule of feeding the twins every 3 hours. If they managed to drink at the breast for 10 minutes or less they got a "half-top-up" via their Nasal Gastric Tube and if they drank for longer than 15 they didn't need a top-up at all. After every feed I was expressing, as this is the milk used for the top-ups.
The nurses took care of the 3 am feeds.
Going home, we were send home with the same schedule and we tried to maintain this. however, instead of top-ups via the tube, we were topping up using bottles.
Feeding times:
6 am
9 am
12 pm
3 pm
6 pm
9 pm
12 am
3 am
Every feed would be approximately 15-20 minutes per baby and 20 - 30 minutes for expressing. This meant that I got about 1 - 1.5 hrs sleep inbetween feeds at a maximum and only if the babies settled down straight after a feed. The latter ofcourse hardly happened, and besides that, you have to clean, prepare, cook, eat etc.
Needless to say by Wednesay both Duane and I were ready to crack. Les & Ruth, Duanes parents came to help us on Wednesday night after a frantic call for help from Duane. We finally got a few hours sleep. I had called Tishan, a friend of ours, earlier to ask if she would mind helping out on Thursday and Friday evening.
On Thursday afternoon the maternal health nurse came out to visit us. She took one look at us, and asked how things were going. We were brutally honest, they were not going good. She started talking about making babies stretch from the 10 pm to the 3 am feed.... I was asking her what happened to the midnight feed. Her look then said it all, and the schedule got completely reworked. We were send home with a 'hospital' schedule, which is fine if you have 3 shifts of 8 hours each covering it. However, for two people, it is enough to drive one insane.
Now our feeding times are different. There are still 8 feeds in the day, but only 2 at night. one at 10pm and one at 2am. Then the next one at 6 am. Quantities in feeds have been increased as well, and i'm now only expressing every other feed or when I'm highly uncomfortable. (I have about 1L of expressed breast-milk in the freezer due to the schedule the hospital sent us home with). Mel joined Tishan and between the two of them they gave Duane and me something extremely valuable to new parents, aspecially new parents of twins: Two full nights sleep.
We're still working on getting the girls used to the new schedule, and tonight is the first time Duane and I are on our own again. It was wonderful to have the help, but it is great to have the house to ourselves again too. We feel a lot more confident now, and hopefully we'll manage to have the girls sleep through to 2 am and then to 6 am which would mean we'd get two stretches of 4 hours sleep :) This is our aim at the moment and I hope we can achieve this in a week.
It is now after 10pm, and both are down after a bath and a feed and so-far-so-good. I'll keep you posted.
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