Feeding Baby

We're at a weird place considering the twins, developmentally, fall anywhere from 6-10 months. Some tasks they do great for a 10 month old, some things, they barely pass the 6-7 month standards. So we have tried to adapt and work at their pace and try to hit all of their benchmarks as well to their actual age as we can. I'm not expecting miracles out of them, especially Jackson. Not that he can't do it, but he's had a bit of a tougher road with lots of health issues slowing him down.

Food has been the hardest. What do we feed them? Do we go by their actual age or their adjusted? The GI doctor says he wants them eating like a 1 year old when they're 1. That's less than 2 months away now. I feel like we have a lot to accomplish to be held to a 1 year old's standards in just 2 months!

So where are they?
Amelia is right on track. She realized somewhere around 7 or 8 months old that she loves food. When it clicked, nothing slowed her down. She eats pretty much anything in arms reach. No seriously, keep your plates away, she will grab a bite of whatever you have before you had the chance to blink. So we've been checking off the boxes with her pretty quickly and not letting her adjusted age slow us down.

I really liked the idea when I was pregnant of baby led weening. I thought it was up my alley. By 6 months actual age, they were no where close to be ready for such a feet. All of our doctors agreed though, we should start giving them some food by that point if they had any chance of catching up. They were just over 3 months adjusted so I was in no hurry to really rush, but purees and us feeding them were the only way it was going to work. We started slow, I only really introduced a few foods their first month or so of eating, and for the most part, they both hated it.

Essentially, we gave Jackson a break for a few months. He wasn't ready. He was gagging, choking and throwing everything up. That led us down the road that helped us eventually find out he has a milk allergy, so I guess it's a good thing we took some time with him, but it was frustrating to see him hating food.

Now at 10 months old, they both eat 2-3 meals of solids a day. Jackson's HAVE to be purees, he won't let anything else pass his lips. Amelia will eat chunks, take bites of foods, pick up foods with her thumb and pointer, and she will even feed herself with a spoon, under careful supervision and when I have the patience for a clean up of half the house that she's thrown food over.

We're working on sippy cups but that too has been a massive fail. So we started straws. After a few straw cups and stealing ideas from friends, we finally found cups that I think will work!

They've been a hit so far!

So a run down of food: They're drinking 4 bottles a day, 6-8oz of breastmilk or formula. Eating solids (anything from purees, to chunks, to puffs, to table food) 2-3 times a day. HOPEFULLY drinking from cups over the next few weeks. Bottle weening will commence at the 1 year point for Amelia, and hopefully for Jackson soon after, once we know he can get enough nutrition from solids.

I've made a big executive decision that I'm going to start weening them from breastmilk in June. At this point, I'm doing it more for a cost saver than for anyone's benefits. Amelia still nurses several times a day. Jackson just never got the hang of it so I've been pumping 4-5 times a day to get a chunk of his milk (which is a wonderful and much needed drop from the 8-10 times I was pumping the first 6 months). It's been a long 10 months though and I'm ready to hang up my pump and spend time focusing on my kids and not how much milk I can pump. I'm glad I've been able to feed both of my babies for so long but I'm just ready to be done. It's exhausting and stressful and an extra few hours I spend a day on pumping and cleaning and sanitizing that I want to be spending giving my munchkins 100% of my attention. I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing with Amelia as far as nursing, but my guess is she'll be ready to ween by then too.

So that's our life in food! I'm going to do a good update on their activities lately as soon as I can get some good video of them rolling and scooching around. It's sooo funny now that they're mobile :) but I'm running out of places to hide the dog bowls that they can't find. Baby gates are our on list of things to do SOON ;)

Random Friday

True story...I spent 20 minutes sitting in my car yesterday in my garage. The twins had finally fallen asleep on our drive home and I didn't want to wake them up. I seriously considered just leaving them in there and going in the house to start dinner. Finally Jack started stirring and I took them inside, where they proceeded to scream their faces off. I should have taken a nap in the car with them. Lesson learned.

When Jack cries, I rush to see what's wrong. When Amelia cries, I give her a good 5 minutes or so to see if she's serious. Play favorites much? Actually, I think she cries wolf too much. It's never too early to learn a lesson.

Jack's new favorite activity is playing patty cake. We need to find a new activity because I am sick of rolling and patting and marking with a B...

The new hypoallergenic soap makes Amelia's skin so soft and pretty...as if she could get any prettier right? Touching Jack is still like touching an alligator. Amelia must have stolen all the pretty in utero. Poor Jack.

This blanket was not washed with our new hypoallergenic detergent. Sorry if you break out in a rash big guy.

Speaking of a big guy....Jack gained 7oz in 2 days on his new high calorie diet. I might get my dream of a chunky baby after all!

Amelia has been crying the entire time I've been writing this post....that's what you get when you cry wolf ;)

Have a happy random Friday everyone!

A Solid Mess

Some fun video of the twins first experience with solids from this past weekend :)

The Great Bottle Debate

Since I was planning on breast feeding I didn't even look into bottle feeding at all. Of course, all of that changed when I had my preemies. Eating from a bottle is easier so when they're so small and just developing the muscles they need for sucking and swallowing, it's important that they get practice and learn how to eat before they can really conquer breast feeding. So after 2 weeks of attempting to breast feed, I gave in and let them give my babies bottles. They took to the bottles quickly and really, that's the only reason we came home at 35 weeks.

My biggest worry with giving them the bottle was that they'd never have the urge to breast feed, since that's so hard to do and the milk just drips out of the bottle. It doesn't seem to be quite an issue yet. They nurse fairly well but only have the strength to do it for 10-15 minutes, which isn't long enough for them to get the 2-3oz of food they need. The options then are bottle feed them afterwards so they can get everything they need in that feeding OR feed them every 2 hours or so. I chose the bottles, mostly for my sanity, so I'd have at least a little chunk of time in between meals to do crazy things like laundry, eat food, SLEEP, or go to their many doctor appointments.

But then, reflux happened. and now bottles are my nightmare.

Any new mom who is trying to register for baby items knows there's about 109380 different choices for some products (like pacifiers, bottles, blankets, soap...) and every bottle says they fix a problem. So allow me to help you, new moms who are interested in bottle feeding. Or preemie moms bringing your babies home with bottles.

We came home with a good chunk of volufeeds from the hospital.

Easy to use, disposable, quick and simple. Problem: we went through them like candy with the 2 babies. We went through a big bag in about .6 seconds. So obviously, finding a non-disposable bottle was our only option.

So walking down the baby aisle, there are a few bottle options. I had no idea what would work best. At the time, Amelia was a burpy and sloppy eater, but she ate and she was still only 35 weeks so she had a bit of growing up still left to do. So we got the Playtex VentAire bottles.

They worked great, for a little while. Then Mia started throwing up half of her feedings. When she did eat, half of the food dripped out the side of her mouth. She didn't cry a lot because she was hungry and was still having the right amount of dirty diapers for a day so we let her go. But it kept getting worse and worse. Before we took her to the doctor we thought we'd try a few tricks.

First, we put her in her carseat (because that's the only baby item I have that has her sitting upright) for about 30 minutes after she ate. And second, we thought we'd try a new bottle.

Our first attempt was going back to some volufeeds and other disposable type bottles from stores. Since she was eating better with those before, maybe she'd go back to that. No such luck. She got even burpier and when she burps, she spits up.

So back to the baby aisle we went, looking for bottles that help with gas and reflux, since those seem to be her big issues. We landed on the Playtex Nurser Drop-Ins. 

The disposable liner was kind of my favorite part about it. I really wanted them in the beginning but it didn't seem very practical for the costs of all the liners for 2 bottles so many times a day, when we could just wash and sanitize the bottles ourselves. Being preemies, the twins will be eating newborn style (many times a day and overnight) for many many weeks, so that would be a lot of liners.To get Amelia to eat though, we figured it would be worth trying.

And it worked. For a little while.

We finally went to the doctor who gave her zantac. Finally, all the stars alined and she started eating better. Still not eating great, she still is a difficult child to feed. She will punch and kick and scream when you put a bottle near her. She still spits up, but not nearly as much. The big test that she passed was finally gaining some weight.

So do I think the bottles did the trick? Do I think the Nursers are a part of Amelia's success. Yes, I do think she prefers those bottles, the nipple, and flow of things. Maybe it's because she nurses too and these are supposed to minic breastfeeding so she's just more comfortable with them. I don't know. The easy clean makes them pretty nice for me. But they're expensive. And we go through a lot of liners.

The VentAire was supposed to have a lot of the same benefits, but the small nipple, and the flow didn't seem to be up her alley. The other big issue with those is they get messy. Please tell me if I'm using them wrong but when you remove the little plastic piece on the bottom to let the air out, you can't put the bottle down. So when you need to burp the baby, adjust them or do anything that requires you to put the bottle down, it leaks everywhere. I've read reviews that there are certain tricks to this, but I can't get it to work. So we put it on the side, but then it rolls off of chairs and nightstands. So things got very messy. Also, apparently it's supposed to eliminate the need for the baby to burp mid-feeding. I don't know if Amelia just likes to burp but she ALWAYS has to burp, regardless of how and what bottle we use. We still give those bottles to Jackson and we actually just leave the plastic piece on, don't do anything special for him. He is totally fine with it, but I think he'd do whatever he had to do to eat. Boy loves his food. They're like night and day with their eating.

So parents, any advise to help Amelia eat better? I'll try anything at this point. She's eating now, and getting what she needs, but I'd love to avoid the fighting and arm workout it is to get her to eat.