Nursing two babies at home

I had Matt take some pictures the other day of me and my set-up for nursing the babies.  I’m going to want to remember how I did this.  :)  I’ve been doing it pretty much the same way since the babies were just a few days old.  I sought out a pregnancy pillow on the advice of a lactation consultant, and a sweet friend brought hers over for me to use.  It has been a LIFESAVER.  {I use a different, structured pillow for out of the house that I keep in my car.}

Anyway… I nurse on the couch, and I take up almost the whole thing.  In one corner of the couch I keep a basket of things like TV remotes, hair ties, baby fingernail clippers, and the like.  Behind it I usually have a cup of ice water.  I use the blue pillows on either side of me so the babies don’t slump down or roll down beside me.  I didn’t always use those; it occurs to me I may have started using them when the boys got heavier.  :)  This is what it looks like before I sit down:

Then I sit down in the middle.  If I’m alone (or without at least one of my girls), I prop the baby who will be on my left right about where that swirly gold basket is, and I hold the other one on my right.  Then I grab the left one after I adjust the pillow.  (If Joanna or an adult is home, they hold one until I get settled.  Natalie can hold one sitting on the couch and then pass him over.)

Then I wrap the pillow around me in a circle.  It overlaps behind me and gives support to my back.

Then I nurse the boys (or a baby doll a monkey, whatever) in a football hold on either side.  The swirly gold basket holds burp cloths.

This is what I usually look like:

Then when they’re finished, which is usually after about 10-15 minutes, I burp them sitting up on the pillow in front of me, one at a time.  Again, if Joanna or an adult is home, I hand the first burper off to be laid down on a blanket or put in a bouncy chair, and I stand up with the other one. Otherwise I grab them in a sack-of-potatoes type hold on either side and stand up, allowing the pillow to fall on the floor.  It’s amazing what you learn how to do when you need to!

Better late than never… really!

So… at the end of last month the babies turned five months old.  They’re closer to six months old now, but I know I’m going to want to find this five month post someday, even if the information was so belatedly entered.  :)  We did our usual couch photo session, but I didn’t get around to editing any of these.  Usually I at least try to fix the white balance, but I’m not even doing that this time.  The main reason is that I’m about to take an editing course online, and I’ll play with these images later on.

For these first few, Thomas is wearing the light blue romper and Michael is in the darker blue.

Is it just me, or does Thomas look like a gangsta here?

I think this was the best of both of them.

Thomas is like “Whatcha doin, brother?”

“Seriously, I don’t know what’s up with him.”

Posed by the monkey:

We took some outside as well, but I just didn’t get anything I loved.  I’m kind of looking forward to when I can sit them up for a picture.  That will be a bit easier (or so she thinks).

Back inside and almost naked!  Michael is now on the right in these pics.

This is such a Michael face.  Now Thomas is having trouble staying up straight.  He’s so wiggly!

It totally looks like they’re cringing away from a giant monster.  Matt was over there, but they weren’t cringing from him.  :)  You can tell Michael was DONE with pictures though.

Totally done.

But Thomas had another cute one in him.  Notice the also cute photobomber in the background.

I’m not sure I can really write much about the boys being five months old, since they’re now just about ten days away from being six months old.  :)  But here are a few things I’ll likely find interesting later:

• Michael is a regular thumb-sucker these days.  I believe he prefers his left, but has been seen sucking on either.
• Thomas often sucks the first two fingers of his left hand.
• Thomas’ very favorite thing to chew on is someone else’s hand/finger/knuckle/toe.  He will grab whatever is closest and begin chowing. (The only toes he’s actually chewed on are Michael’s and they’re very clean.)
• He has a very strong jaw.
• Michael can roll back to front but has not been witnessed rolling the other way.  Thomas can roll both ways.  Look out world!
• They sleep in the same room at night with no trouble.  They usually sleep 10-12 hours uninterrupted.  Hallelujah!
• They nap in separate rooms and neither is particularly great at it.  Thomas is the better napper of the two.
• They love to be held.
• They do seem to interact with each other more and more, and it’s very cute!

I sure do love these boys!!

A Day in the Life in April (finally!)

I’m just having so much trouble lately keeping up with blogging.  It’s not the same kind of there are just no hands! trouble from when the babies were brand new, but I’m just not getting it done.  :)

I keep on taking the million pictures though.

My April Day in the Life was last Tuesday, and it was a pretty full day!  I took the pictures that day but didn’t write anything down until this morning, so this post may not be quite as detail-filled as usual.  :)

At 6:50am I was up and nursing the boys.  This meant that they slept all night long, the wonderful people.

Thomas’ ear while nursing:

Michael’s ear while nursing.

By 7:30 I was in the kitchen making lunches and getting bags ready for James and Natalie to go to school.

I’m pretty sure this picture is showing what the little four were doing while I was getting ready in my bedroom.

This was most likely one of those mornings where I had to wake up Joanna so I could lay Thomas down in their room for a nap.  She’s having breakfast at 8:05.

At 8:30 I woke the sleeping babies (No! Never!) so we could head to the church.

Michael:

Thomas:

(He naps in the pack-and-play in the big kids’ room.)

We got the church about ten till and waited to have our school pics (or really sibling pics for us) made with Lindsay.  By 9:15 I had dropped off Natalie and James at their classes and headed up to Musikgarten with Joanna and the babes.  They reeeeeallly needed to eat so I fed them and we listened to our baby friends sing and dance.  I don’t know all these ladies well enough to just post pics of them and their babes without permission, hence the white dots.  :)

The babies finished up eating in time for some stick-chewing fun.

This one was tired (she blamed it on me waking her up), so she snuggled in the sunshine under my nursing shawl.  :)

Our class was over at 9:45, but we discovered then that the building was on lock-down due to a suspicious person that had been seen in one of the (empty) classrooms.  So we hung out for a little bit longer while the building was cleared.

We got back home at 10:30, and I got to pull into my cleaned-out garage for the first time. (We worked on it the previous weekend.)  We have a lot to do still, but we cleared out the huge junk for heavy trash day and put up some shelving for storage.  Wahoo!

I put the babies down for a nap at 10:35, and Joanna began unloading the dishwasher at 10:45.

At 11:05 I sent Joanna in to my room to watch a video on the iPad while I folded laundry and watched “grown up” television in the living room.  It was a nice little break!

By noon my mom had brought over Wendy’s for us, and I was nursing the babies.

Thomas got some time with Gran!

When I lay the babies down for naps, I have a fancy system to remember what the heck time it was:

Then Joanna and I settled on the couch to do some school work.  I love one on one time with my biggest big!

At 2:30 the babies were up from their nap.  This is Michael in my selfie:

I must have done diaper laundry at some point – here it is drying outside.

I use an app for tracking when I nurse the babies.  It doesn’t track twins, but since I nurse them (almost always) at the same time, I just track Michael.  This way I know when they last ate and on which side.  This is a screen shot of my app:

At about 2:50 my very wonderful friend Candice brought the middles home from school.

I’m doing a photo-a-day challenge on Instagram (I’m jgpence if you want to come follow me!), and the day’s prompt was “obsessions.” I couldn’t come up with a good photo-op for my obsessions, but then James came running by with his two pair of Thomas the Train flip flops.  So that’s what I did.  :)

Then at 3:35 it was time for a little snack.

I also was doing a 30 day planking exercise thing, so I planked for 45 seconds at 4:00.  I have since ditched that exercise since it was doing very bad things to my shoulder.  I got up to being able to hold the plank for a minute though.  For me, that’s pretty huge.  :)

By 4:30 Matt was home (early!), and it was time to get the babes up. (I didn’t take a pic, but I’m guessing they went down about 3:30.)  Thomas was still sleeping:

But Michael was awake.  :)

The babies and I went up to the new Women and Children’s wing at the hospital to help for a photo-op.  They were getting the local ObGyns together for a picture and wanted to include some babies as well.  (It was a better idea in theory than actual practice, let me tell you!)

I got there about 4:45 and nursed Michael in the car while my mom (who met us there) held Thomas.  Then at 5:00 we went inside and I nursed Thomas while mom held Michael.  Actually, I think that may be backward.  Anyway, they both got fed.

I signed a waiver for the picture and put both boys in white onesies.  My ObGyn, who delivered the babies, arrived, and was so tickled with the boys!

She even let Thomas chew on her (clean) finger for a really long time.  It’s his very favorite thing.

It was so sweet – when her doctor friends would come in, she’d show off the twins she delivered.  :)  That kinda made my day.

The first picture they did just the doctors – pretty easy…

Then the chaos began.  My doc insisted on holding both boys, and they did SO WELL!!  Really, they were dream babies for the whole time.  I’m sure her arms were pretty tired though!

Many of the babies were at the stranger anxiety phase, and there was lots of crying!  It really was quite hysterical to watch. 

We left about 6pm.  It was a wonderful experience, but I’ll be so surprised if the picture of the docs holding babies is actually used for publicity.  Ha!

At 6:30 I nursed the babies for the last time then left for my women’s choir practice.

This was the only picture I snuck.  We worked hard prepping our pieces for Good Friday.

At about 8:30 we finished up and I headed back home.  I don’t have pictures, but I’m assuming I watched an episode of television with the hubs before heading to bed at 10:15.

And that’s a wrap for April!