It's been a bit crazy so far as we adjust to having two newborns at home. They are really good babies but it is super busy taking care of two little ones! They are on a three hour feeding schedule which means they eat at 3, 6, 9 and 12 am and pm. Each feeding/changing takes about an hour and a half or so, leaving about an hour and a half in between each feeding for us to live our lives, sleep, eat, take a walk, etc. I've been able to breastfeed most feedings (we do two formula bottles a day per the NICU doctor's instructions). Darren takes the midnight feeding so I am able to sleep from about 10:30 until 3 am.
The feedings will probably get faster as we become more efficient. Here's how each feeding goes. First I change Brooklyn (she always goes first). I breastfeed each baby one at a time (whoever suggested its possible to feed both at the same time is crazy! It's hard enough to feed one at a time!). Then I give each girl 15 ml extra of pumped breast milk to try and fatten them up (preemies need extra calories any chance you can get). I burp them. I put Brooklyn back down and do the same routine with Bailey. Then I pump for a few extra minutes so I can use the milk to supplement the 15 ml for each girl and build my milk supply (again, TMI for public blog post?). Then I look at the clock and think, okay, I'll start this all over again in a hour and a half. When I have help (my mom and mother in law have been stopping by, and obviously Darren helps when he isn't working), it seems to go a little faster, but still takes a good hour and 15 minutes usually.
The hardest part about having two is when you are feeding/changing/holding one and the other baby cries. They are pretty mellow babies for the most part - usually when they cry its b/c their pacifier falls out or they are hungry. I swear Brooklyn can tell when Bailey is crying waiting to be fed because she takes an extra long time breastfeeding. I've figured out that if I set Bailey next to the recliner in a bouncer, I can at least put her pacifier back in and comfort her a little while feeding Brooklyn.
We've been taking walks around the neighborhood every day and we've made it out of the house twice (doctor's appointment and newborn photo session.) The feeding schedule is really easy to manage until you throw in obstacles like a doctor's appointment. But I am learning how to adjust and pack a really effective diaper bag so that we can leave the house and still get both girls fed and changed. I think our first major outing will be Fourth of July parties.
It's funny how each girl has a different personality already. Brooklyn is our wild girl. She makes these crazy grunting noises all the time that sound like a cross between laughter and the velocipator noises from Jurassic Park. She also gets into ravenous feeding frenzy mode where she will just shake her head back and forth with her mouth searching for a nipple. And she will latch onto anything she can find (she is always trying to feed on the head rest of the swing). Bailey is the crier. She is also the calmer baby at the same time. When she is content, she sleeps like a little angel while the grunts of her sister can be heard constantly. But when she is unhappy, she will let out loud screams. She also loves to be held. Sometimes when she is crying, she just wants someone to hold her (and keep putting her pacifier back in). She has a harder time in the middle of the night - she tends to not want to go back to sleep between the three am and six am feeding.
I've been putting both girls into their swings during the day and they really like those. I would suggest to any twin mom that two swings are a MUST have.
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