Any help would be most welcome.
My wife gave birth to twins last week (our firsts), they were at week 36 (about 5lb each).
One went into neo nate and TBH the mat hospital was extremely busy when we were in and the midwifes seemed to just give formula to both babies and did not have time to support the b/f learning curve for us. We are not big complainers.
We had planned to breast feed as much as possible and make up the shortfall with formula, ante natal classes said that many multiple birth parents struggle to wholly b/f.
After 4 days we got home and started b/f attempts as best as we could. Babies are struggling to latch (mouths are a little too small). We have bought a pump but my wife is struggling to express even 20ml every 3 hours so we are mostly feeding on formula.
This is really upsetting my wife. We have made sure she is getting plenty rest, keeping hydrated, drinking milk (cows) and eating well.
Should we keep drawing off those 20mls/hour or pack up ? The expressing is really frustrating my wife and the stress is doing more harm than than the 20mls is doing good.
I noticed large expressing pumps in the mat hosp and I bought a smaller version (it was the same price as renting a big one/month). Would we have more luck with the bigger pump or is this not a 'size matters' type of thing ?
How much of a disaster is this if we cannot b/f ? Are we 1% of the population here or are we one of many ? Our community health nurse has told us to perservere and that 75 % of people in the area are b/f'ing. We are very afraid of our attempts failing.
Any thoughts would be most welcome.