Hi everyone,

I’m working on an article for Preemie Magazine (www.preemiemagazine.com). It will appear in the Jan/Feb edition, and the subject is breastmilk for preemie multiples (twins, triplets, or more). So if you are a mom of prematurely born mutiples and have provided human milk for your babies – pumped, nursed, or a combo of both – I would love to hear from you. Length of time doesn’t matter – whether it was 3 days, 3 weeks, 3 months or 3 years.

I’m looking for short (say, a paragraph or a couple of sentences) anecdotes – some ideas I thought of were:

What was helpful to you (could be things people said, or did, etc)?
What wasn’t helpful?
Was there any gear (pumps, nursing pillows, scales) that was especially helpful for you?
What was the hardest thing about providing milk to more than one baby?
What was the best part?
Were you encouraged to begin pumping for your babies after their birth?
Any kangaroo care stories :)?
If you put your babies to breast, what was the learning process like?
If you tandem nursed, what was that like?
What was it like providing breast milk after leaving the NICU – was it harder, easier? Why?

But please feel free to share anything you’d like new moms of preemie multiples to know about providing breast milk for their babies.

And also, of course, what type of multiples you have, how you got them the milk (nursing, pumping, or both), and how long you did it. And name and general location,although these can certainly be changed for privacy purposes if you prefer.

If interested, I will need to hear back from you by Saturday (Oct 28). Thanks so much for your time and consideration – I look forward to hearing back from you.


Best,

Alex

Dear Alex,

Though pregnant with twins, I delivered only one live baby (about 2 pounds) at 27 weeks. I pumped for the next three months until he came home around his original due date.

I vividly recall flying from my home in Maine to Rochester, NY, to attend the funeral of a beloved uncle. I hauled my mechanical breast pump with me and wound up pumpiing in the cubicle at a restaurant ladies room. To this day, the sight of a six-pack size styrofoam cooler brings back memories of transporting breast milk to the hospital.

I used a photo of the baby to aid my let-down reflex, but soon became conditioned by the hydraulic wheez of the pump. So much so, that my let-down reflex used to kick in at the grocery store. My milk would leak through my shirt at the sound of the automatic sprayers misting the produce.

My son is 22 now and will graduate from college in the spring.

Good luck with your article.

Cheers, Marcy Black
marcyb@maine.rr.com