Exclusively Pumping

Hello everyone! When I found out I was pregnant I knew I wanted to breastfeed no matter what. I wanted to make sure my child had the absolute best. But when I found out that I was having twins I soon started to think that I wouldn't be able to breastfeed two babies at the same time, and if I needed help it wasn't like my husband could just let one of them latch onto him (the thought of that just makes me laugh). So I started to think of just exclusively pumping. I got a Medela double pump breast pump from my insurance for free (something everyone should look into!). The first few weeks of breast pumping were absolute hell but totally worth it. If you can get past your fist hump continuing is no problem. A week into pumping my left breast would constantly get a clogged duct, which hurts something fierce and takes forever to get unclogged. There was a indecent where it started out as a small block and then after a few hours my whole left breast became blocked. I was absolutely scared, thinking the worst, my left breast was going to dry up and I would only have my right breast to feed both girls and I knew that wasn't going to last long. My mother was over and helped me all day by applying warm packs and massaging my breast forcefully while I was breast pumping at a very high power (my nipples hurt so bad at the end of the day). After about 24 hours of constantly doing this my breast FINALLY unclogged all the way. I can't express how excited I was to get more than an ounce of milk out of my breast. After about a month of bottle feeding and only giving the girls breast milk the pediatrician wanted me to put a Vitamin D supplement into the milk so they got there daily dose of Vitamin D. The girls absolutely HATED the taste of the milk when I put it in, so after discussing it with my husband we decided to supplement the breast milk with formula. We started using Similac Advance non-GMO (blue can) but found that they would spit up a lot, so we switched to the Similac Sensitive (orange can) and they would drink it just fine. We figured since they were premature that their tummies could not handle the regular formula and needed it broken down more. They were now able to get extra vitamins and minerals plus the vitamin D the pediatrician wanted them to have with out the horrible taste (which in my option the formula smells horrible but they loved it). They grew like weeds after we choose to switch to supplementing with formula plus it seemed more filling for them so they lasted longer between feedings (which meant more sleep for mommy and daddy!).

If you have any questions for me feel free to comment below. Thank you for reading!