Newbie with general and not so general BF ?'s

I have almost 6 week old twins (6/27/11). At their one month check-up baby boy still had not gained back his birth weight. He was measuring 6lb 10oz and his birthweight was 6lbs 12oz. Baby girl was 6lbs 8oz at birth and at the one month check she was 7lbs 10oz. I'm not overly concerned yet, because he is gaining, having normal diapers, etc. When he was born he didn't nurse for the first 36 hours in the hospital, we were only allowed to take him home because he hadn't lost 10% of his body weight, still had normal wet/dirty diapers, and multiple nurses, LC's, and their pedi had seen him latch, but that he didn't nurse. Then when we got home he kept up the lazy habit, would sleep for 4-5 hours at a time (yes my mistake I shouldn't have let him do it) and was just not nearly as efficient as eating as his sister.

Dr. all but was making it sound like she expected me to supplement for baby boy for sure, and baby girl if she didn't keep gaining. I guess I don't see why the fast jump to formula if baby girl is obviously gaining just fine - especially when she had a big jump on nursing correctly at the hospital and baby boy is growing and gaining, just much slower. After all, someone has to be on the bottom of the bell curve...

My question - Am I doing something wrong, or is he just growing at his own rate? I'm now having him wake up every two hours if he hasn't woken on his own just to make sure he's eating. Is there anything else I should be doing? I just don't like feeling like I've failed him in some capacity.

 

:welcome: to TS & congrats on your babies!

I don't think you are failing them one tiny bit. :wub: I think your pedi is not very BF friendly, though...

I do think you've isolated the problem and are working on correcting it. I would just keep track of how many feeds and wet/dirty diapers he has each day. Definitely make sure he doesn't go longer than 2 hours during the day and 3 at night (start to start) just so he's getting between 10-12 feeds/day. I betcha he'll be fine.

 

I think you are doing everything right! I had the same problem with my twins. DD was 7 lb 12 oz, nursed like crazy, and gained normally. DS was 5 lb 6 oz and fought the latch, gained slowly but did gain. I just made sure I switched sides with them so that the strong nurser kept my supply up.

If you supplement, your little one will never learn to stop being lazy and nurse well. And you are right about the curves not being black and white. What is important is the trend. If he is gaining, having lots of wet and poopy diapers, and otherwise thriving then it doesn't matter where he falls on the curve. My son didn't go above the 3rd percentile until he was 18 months old but he gained every visit.

Trust your instincts and keep up the good work!

 

I agree with PP, keep working on getting frequent feeds during the day.
If the weights were not on the same scale there is likely some variance there.

Hang in there.

 

Another thing you could do to help increase his weight gain a bit is breast compression while he's nursing - that helps get more milk into him.

Also, here's a good article from Kellymom on some possible reasons for slow weight gain & some suggestions to help increase weight gain - see if anything jumps out at you.

 

Yeah, I wasn't so impressed with this pedi, she's not supposed to be our normal pedi. If it seems she will be we'll most likely change Dr.'s. Thanks for the reassurance that we're on the right track. I have a 3 yo DD at home and we nursed for 14 months, so this is slightly foreign to be having "issues". It doesn't help that she was consistently on the 85-90 percentile on her charts each time. We're also seeing a different pedi for the twins than I did with DD, that pedi moved to the administrative side of medicine at the start of this year.

Ding, ding, ding! It's also good to hear it from someone else that had a low chart kiddo that is doing just fine.

Hadn't considered that, but it was the same digital scale the first and last time. We had one check in the middle on a traditional scale.

Had never heard of breast compressions, thanks for the info!



Thank you, all of you, for taking the time to respond. Here I thought the tough part was going to be the pregnancy and getting them here, little did I know what waited for us on this side Hopefully, as I have more time I can get more familiar with TS.

 

Another thing that might help with the lazy nurser is to tandem nurse if you and the babies are up to it: I did this a lot and it really helped my weaker nursing baby because the good nurser triggered the let-down for both breasts and made it easier for the weaker one to get a good meal. Maybe it would work for a lazy nurser too.

BTW my weaker nursing baby never moved above 10% on the charts during the first year - at their 2nd birthday check-up she was taller and weighed more.

GL - it sounds like you are doing fine!

 

Finally made it back to check in. My slower gainer is steadily gaining ~1 lb every two weeks. He's sitting at 8lbs 11oz and big sis is sitting at 10lbs 3oz. We finally saw their regular pedi this time. She didn't raise any concerns about his weight or how he was gaining. Thank you again to everyone for the advice!

re: tandem nursing that's all I try to do. It's so much easier to feed both and then we're done for the next couple hours, otherwise, we end up nursing for what seems like hours only to restart about the time we finish the first round.

 

Just wanted to comment on this...my twins are totally different sizes...and eating types...and they are totally formula Feed. At birth my little man was 5 pounds 5 ounces and my big little man was 6 pounds 1 ounce. At 7 weeks there was a 2 pound difference and at 11 weeks there was a 3 pound difference. My smaller little man eats less and has a totally different body type and personallity. I would not be concerned and I am glad you found a different ped who feels the same way...every baby will be on it's own curve...as long as he isn't losing weight then all is good.

WooHoo for making it this far Breastfeeding...I BF my little girl for 16 months...wasn't able to try with the twins!

 

Do you switch sides? or does each baby have an "assigned" side?