Feedings. Nothing More Than Feedings.
Feeding is the most enjoyable activity I do with the twins right now. Considering my other options are changing their clothes and diapers,* keeping them awake,** and giving them a bath,*** feeding is about the only enjoyable activity I do with them. Unless you count watching them sleep as an activity.
Feeding a baby while he teeters in your arms between slumber and alert gives a certain degree of satisfaction. Give me a basketball game to watch and a well-behaved toddler playing quietly while I feed him, and I could do that all night. Of course he’d then spend the next couple hours spitting up most of the dozen or so ounces I forced into him during the game.
Right now the twins are eating three to four ounces at each feeding, and enjoying eight feedings every day. We’re trying to eliminate one of those overnight feedings, but no luck yet.**** Tory generally takes close to four ounces, and Ian takes close to three-and-a-half. To put it another way, Tory eats close to 30 ounces and Ian 25; that’s a combined 55 ounces, which Ellie would have to snack on 20 Wheat Thins, four ounces of summer sausage, and a dozen vanilla sandwich cookies to equal her caloric output. Their massive intake shows in their weights, as Tory came in at 7lbs, 11ozs today, and Ian was 6 lbs, 14 ozs. It’s good to see them putting on weight; that makes a couple more childhood disorders, disabilities, or diseases we don’t have to worry about out of the way, and approximately 103,260,540,564 left to fret over.
They eat all that milk in about 20 minutes. That’s substantially faster than Abbie ate, though I think that’s mostly due to the different bottles we’re using for the twins. We could go back to Abbie’s bottles and their slower flow, but I’m discovering that I need those extra 10 minutes at each feeding a lot more with the twins than I did with Abbie.
Sometimes, mostly between the hours of midnight and 7am, they poke along on their feedings. When it’s 2am and all I want to do I go back to sleep, and I see that my baby has only eaten a half-ounce in the past ten minutes, I want to cry. The best trick I’ve discovered to make them eat faster is to apply steady outward pressure on the bottle, giving them a constant sensation that the bottle is about to be removed. The steady threat of ending the feeding is enough to kick them into action. Should they still doze off and let the bottle slip from their mouth, I gently poke it back in with enough force to wake them back up. That gets them sucking again, and gets me back into bed quicker. Sleeping is my favorite joint activity with the twins.
* That makes them cry.
** That makes them scream.
*** That makes them bawl so hard they forget to inhale.
**** They went four hours between feedings last night. Once.
Feeding a baby while he teeters in your arms between slumber and alert gives a certain degree of satisfaction. Give me a basketball game to watch and a well-behaved toddler playing quietly while I feed him, and I could do that all night. Of course he’d then spend the next couple hours spitting up most of the dozen or so ounces I forced into him during the game.
Right now the twins are eating three to four ounces at each feeding, and enjoying eight feedings every day. We’re trying to eliminate one of those overnight feedings, but no luck yet.**** Tory generally takes close to four ounces, and Ian takes close to three-and-a-half. To put it another way, Tory eats close to 30 ounces and Ian 25; that’s a combined 55 ounces, which Ellie would have to snack on 20 Wheat Thins, four ounces of summer sausage, and a dozen vanilla sandwich cookies to equal her caloric output. Their massive intake shows in their weights, as Tory came in at 7lbs, 11ozs today, and Ian was 6 lbs, 14 ozs. It’s good to see them putting on weight; that makes a couple more childhood disorders, disabilities, or diseases we don’t have to worry about out of the way, and approximately 103,260,540,564 left to fret over.
They eat all that milk in about 20 minutes. That’s substantially faster than Abbie ate, though I think that’s mostly due to the different bottles we’re using for the twins. We could go back to Abbie’s bottles and their slower flow, but I’m discovering that I need those extra 10 minutes at each feeding a lot more with the twins than I did with Abbie.
Sometimes, mostly between the hours of midnight and 7am, they poke along on their feedings. When it’s 2am and all I want to do I go back to sleep, and I see that my baby has only eaten a half-ounce in the past ten minutes, I want to cry. The best trick I’ve discovered to make them eat faster is to apply steady outward pressure on the bottle, giving them a constant sensation that the bottle is about to be removed. The steady threat of ending the feeding is enough to kick them into action. Should they still doze off and let the bottle slip from their mouth, I gently poke it back in with enough force to wake them back up. That gets them sucking again, and gets me back into bed quicker. Sleeping is my favorite joint activity with the twins.
* That makes them cry.
** That makes them scream.
*** That makes them bawl so hard they forget to inhale.
**** They went four hours between feedings last night. Once.
posted by Matt at
10:01 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home