Big Eaters

We went for an appointment with a lactation consultant today (we love Group Health!) and the boys are doing really well. Breastfeeding/ feeding the boys with expressed breast milk has been a challenge...to say the least. Since they are preemies, we couldn't start off breastfeeding like a full term baby would have been able to, they needed to develop neurologically as well as physically before breastfeeding would work. Tomorrow is their due date, so we are technically full term now, even though the boys are 5 weeks old now. Since the boys couldn't feed from the breast, my best friend and nemesis has been the breast pump in order to develop my milk supply. Since a pump just can't remove milk from a breast as well as a baby can, and milk supply is a supply and demand thing...I haven't been able to produce enough milk to feed both boys. It's been REALLY hard.

Today's appointment made all of the hard work seem worth it. We weighed the boys before and after a feeding and Odin (the one who has the most problems breastfeeding) took 22 mL (almost 1 oz) and Lars took 50 mL (almost 2 oz)! Lars weighed in at 8 lbs 2 oz (birth weight 4 lbs 14.5 oz) and Odin weighed 7 lbs 7 oz (birth weight 5 lbs 3 oz). We also learned that the boys are likely both "tongue tied" which makes breastfeeding more challenging and the transfer of milk from me to them less than optimal, on top of all the issues that come with pre-term birth. We have an appointment to have that taken care of (clipping the frenulum) on Monday (again, we love Group Health!). We still need to supplement with bottles since each boy typically takes 3 oz per feeding, but breastfeeding (even exclusively!) is eventually going to work!

Lars thought the heating pad on the scale was super comfy