Feeding every 2 hours

All babies lose a little weight during their first week of life. Chaya and Anjali lost a little over 10% of their birth weights, so because of that the pediatrician wants us to feed them every 2 hours, and supplement with 0.5oz of formula at each feeding. We will need to do this until they reach their birth weights at least. This is cutting down on our sleep a LOT, since sometimes one feeding can take up to an hour! Our biggest problem is waking them up, and having them stay awake during their feedings! All they want to do is sleep! We have to take all their clothes off, sometimes change their diapers, and poke them everywhere to try to annoy them and have them cry a little to wake up! Sometimes we can't even wake them up at all, so we've skipped a few feedings here and there. It sometimes is also a challenge for mommy to wake up, and stay awake while breastfeeding.

The lactation nurses at the hospital showed us two very fascinating feeding techniques if we don't want to use bottles, and risk nipple confusion (when the babies get confused by going back and forth between bottle and breast). You can use a plastic syringe and very slowly squirt formula into the baby's mouth. You can also use a small plastic cup full of formula, and slowly allow the baby to drink it up. It's really amazing to see, but it works! It takes a long time, and you need to keep burping them during, since they may gulp in a lot of air while doing this. We tried the cup technique once after coming home from the hospital, but it was a very long process, and wasn't that easy to do.. so we decided to introduce bottles, they loved them right away, and never had any nipple confusion.

We are looking forward to our 2 weeks appointment at the pediatrician to see whether or not they have reached their birth weights.. hopefully we won't have to do this whole production for too long!

I was able to do tandem breastfeeding starting on day 2! Luckily both girls got the hang of breastfeeding quickly. Feeding them at the same time saves a lot of time!

I LOVE this photo that my mom took of me feeding the girls.

Chaya getting fed with the syringe.

Chaya drinking out of the little cup.

Anjali drinking out of the cup.

Grand-Maman helping with the bottle feeding.

Daddy bottle feeding Chaya.