Twinfo

Men can lactate. It’s true. Wikipedia said so. And what’s more, male lactation in humans has become more common in recent years they say.

So I was thinking… With the right amount of nipple stimulation and a little hormonal treatment, I could get Paul to help breastfeeding. Sure, men can’t produce as much milk as women, but enough for the odd night feed perhaps? I’ll just check with him….

…he’s not keen. Something about the lads at the gym.

Ah - says here that male to female transsexuals may also produce milk due to the hormones they take to reshape their bodies. And they would want more realistic, developed breasts wouldn’t they? That work, you know, tried and tested?

Brilliant - this could save my shredded nipples from disaster just in time. I’ll pop an ad in the village shop in the morning. ‘Wanted - M to F tranny wetnurse wanted for hungry twins.’ Could be a mutually beneficial arrangement methinks…

…but you’d be wrong. Just as I thought I was cracking this breastfeeding lark, another ginormous spanner in the works.

The bad latch on incident (and now, I realise, many bad latch on incidents) has turned into a severely wounded nipple complete with blood blister and a dead patch on the end. A piece of skin is falling off it; I can no longer make it work. Actually it’s more that I can no longer stand the agony of subjecting it to my well meaning but vicious litter of terriers.

Here’s what I do - express on that side (yawn…) and nurse, as they like to say in America, on the other. Think about it… that means more bottles; I rotate the go on the breast, they take turns to chomp. So what happens next? Almost overnight, they:

FORGET HOW TO FEED! (If there were a font that said horror movie voice over echoing down eerie monastery corridor, I would use it now)

Unbelievable. I offer them my delicious plump left mammary on Friday night, and they dutifully each open a cute little mouth, and… wait. And wait, and wait. For the milk to come. To be delivered onto each lazy princessly tongue I presume, for the little madams to delicately swallow at their leisure. Absolutely no sucking takes place whatsoever. In the space of 24 hours, they’ve totally forgotten it all! Girls, this is not how it’s done! You have to work for this dinner dammit!

A long story short: More tears from me (floods), then the WHOLE of Saturday spent re-learning basic nutritional survival skills, as per week one, only in the next size babygros. By Sunday we were starting to get back on track.

Now I’m juggling the delicate balance of nipple preservation, baby feeding skills practice, and adequate suckling to enhance milk production. Oh and adequate infant nutritional provision. But evidently that’s not been much of a problem - these monkeys are growing faster than Clifford the big red dog.

So the vicious cycle goes thus: I need to feed loads to keep them in training, avoid feeding to allow nipple repairs and then be sure to feed plenty to improve my supply. See? Tricky’s not the word. But rubbish is.

Anyway - that was that, but then there was this - yesterday morning my beautiful Rosa fed, and lying perfectly content on my chest, turned her head to me. With a cute sideways look gave me not one, but four of the biggest smiles her 6 week old mouth could manage. Amazing. Nipple pain? What nipple pain?!

Amazing. She’s totally got it, and it all seemed to fall into place around their due date last Friday.

I am so happy, but understand completely why mothers of twins resort so often to bottle feeding (stubborn, me…). I love it when they feed from me, despite the fact that my left nipple feels like a piece of raw flesh being chewed in the grip of a terrier’s jaws for the first 10 seconds. They are ruthless - just one bad latch 3 weeks ago that I overlooked because it had taken an hour to achieve, and the pain still persists.

Top tip girls - NEVER persist with a bad latch. Even if it took a week to achieve.

Today the three of us achieved something I thought was way out of my short term reach.

At 9am I got up, then single handedly (which is a misnomer as I’ve got two hands - luckily) and simultaneously picked up two babies, changed two babies and plugged in and fed two babies, yes, on the breast, and both totally at once, yes!

I called Paul, and his mum to come and witness; I ordered Paul to take a photo. Then I reached for the phone just within my grasp and telephoned people with the news. Then I sent text messages of my achievement. Having bored the whole world to tears with my story, I’m now blogging about it.

Now of course I think I’m superwoman…

It was however, as always, a case of two steps forward one big one back. The rest of the day was rubbish. Ruby pursed her lips for most of it, refusing to drink the precious nectar I make for her with love, opting instead for some muck by Milupa. Bad baby…

Out of pure laziness (I deserve a break now and again) we gave both girls a bottle in the night rather than suffer the uncertainty of breastfeeding. As a result, I woke this morning to find my breast tissue had been replaced by lumps of wood. By 11am however having had the pair of them chawing on my nipples for a good 2 hours between them, my norgs as Paul likes to call them had been restored once again to the limp flat spaniels’ ears I’ve become accustomed to.

(Yep, they both fed today; hallelujah!)

Right now I’m strapped to a mint green plastic milking machine, bottles strapped to both breasts via a bikini top I adapted. I’m ingenious like that. The best bit is when you remove the bottles, and your vacuum enlarged nipples explode through the jagged cuts in the fabric like bullets firing out of a pistol. My readership has gone beyond friends and family now so I won’t post a picture. It’s very funny. In a kind of Hannah-Barbera way. You’ll have to imagine.

Today we had a breakthrough. Rosa fed once in the night (properly, I mean breastwise), and then again at a sensible hour in the morning, closely followed by her beautiful sister. Ruby has shown no interest so far in my diminutive mammary glands, but today proved that she knew exactly what to do with them. It was bliss. We all had another big sleep in the spare bed, and when I woke I noticed 2 months had passed and it was spring.

Breastfeeding is hard. I had no idea it could be so hard to get a baby to do what it’s supposed to do naturally. I don’t know how much is to do with the fact that they arrived early, the fact that there are two to teach, or the fact that hospital was a stressful early environment. Although resolve wanes periodically, I am determined to make this work. It will be a joyous day when they both want to feed from me. And at the same time? That would be too good to be true. We can only hope…