Going back to 2006, we were first time parents, and had very little clue on anything to do with children. We had decided to try for a baby, and were shell shocked when we came to hear it was actually two. Even a day or two before we brought them home, I asked a nurse "what do I do with them, besides feeding them and changing their nappies?". I was clueless. We were.
We were lucky that I had a non-eventful pregnancy until the twins decided to come 6 weeks early (34+1 weeks)... that's when our 'fun' began.
The twins were in special care for just under four weeks, one of them having a lot of complications (our daughter) and our son getting on pretty well after some initial help with breathing and feeding. This included our daughter being on a ventilator, having a hole in her lung (pneumothorax) and feeding difficulties. By the time they came home, they were still less than 3 kilograms each, our son was breastfeeding 'ok', our daughter terribly. I had immense pain despite everyone telling me she was attaching well. I reached out for help everywhere I could... the local ABA ladies had no experience with twins and tried to help, but I still got little improvement. I couldn't keep up with demand even though I was now expressing milk at least 4-6 times per day (and night), plus breastfeeding as often as I could tolerate the pain through. Yep. Pain. They tell you that you shouldn't have any... sometimes you just do!
So, poor attachment from small mouths which probably weren't attaching correctly equalled poor supply to some degree, stressed parents because now that they were home, they didn't sleep. I'm not joking. Unless they were asleep on us, they didn't sleep. They didn't feed exceptionally well, so didn't sleep exceptionally well anyway... but within two weeks we knew something more was going on beyond being hungry. Their six week checkup (after two weeks home) with the paediatrician saw a diagnosis of silent reflux. Medication started and by four months old, our son was off the medication and reasonably happy. My milk supply gradually caught up by three months too - after a new expressing regime and medication supplements. I still had to express many times per day to keep up with demand, and at the same time as I could keep up with demand, I made the gut-wrenching decision to discontinue breastfeeding her directly - or attempting to as it had become. Every time I tried, I had a toe-curling, excruciating experience. It never got better like the experts tell you it should. Despite her attachment being "perfect".
Between three and six months I actually managed to exclusively express or breastfeed for them both. After this time, I had to introduce some formula again. It also coincided with me going back to work two days per week (though I could express there, it became physically hard to express enough while away those two days to keep up with their huge demands)... and our daughter had started to get very unsettled again. Extremely so - screaming all day and much of the night so.
I took them to the GP for their 6 month vaccinations, armed with my mother-in-law to help defend me when the GP dismissed everything we were seeing. Apparently because her son cried a lot, that means that its normal for all kids to. I spent about half an hour arguing with this silly woman that there WAS something wrong with my child.
The inference had been that we did something wrong with getting her to sleep, that kids just spend hours crying each day, and at even barely 6 months, that it was normal to be upset for 4-6 hours of the waking day, unable to relax into naps properly, and only having single sleep cycle sleeps, despite waking tired and clearly unhappy at the end, and not being well rested in the morning after waking every 40-50 minutes all night.
This is where my lessons of trusting my instinct started.
Eventually I 'won' the discussion and was given a referral back to the Paed. Turns out our daughter (K) hadn't had her dose of Omeprazole (aka Losec - a proton pump inhibitor (PPI) reflux medication) revised since she was a tiny 'newborn', so of course it wasn't doing a lot to help. I also suspected something was happening with the formula because she got considerably worse when we reintroduced the comp feeds. Our son was mainly breastfed by this stage and only had one bottle most evenings before bed, when my supply was at its lowest. The Paed didn't seem to take this 100% seriously, but in hindsight I think it was to try and be thorough, not to rush to conclusions. First we were told to try lactose-free, then soy (though I wanted to try goats milk formula and skip the soy)... finally we did settle on goats milk formula for the comp feeds. This took a matter of a couple of months to eventually get to.
In that time, we also boosted the dose of her reflux medication, then when it and the new formula were helping, but she still wasn't a "normal, smiling baby", we tried another reflux medication, Zoton. We were told at the time that "this is the last stop before she needs a scope to check her throat". That terrified me at the time, and I didn't really know what it would mean, in hindsight I actually wish we did go ahead with it, it may have given us something more to work with for both kids! More hindsight!
However, within a week of this combination, we started to see an improvement. Within a month or so she was even smiling voluntarily. It took her until after 9 months old to do this of her own accord (she would only occasionally smile/giggle in response to things we did too). Until she started to smile voluntarily, we never realised how much she didn't before that.
Also, with this health improvement, came sleep. Yes, after a solid 10 months of interrupted sleep, she would go to sleep in her own cot, and stay asleep overnight. We had maintained a good bed time routine over the many months, and as soon as she had the pain GONE... she slept without us changing a thing. It could have been developmental, it could have been many things, but I believed then, as I still do now, that she finally could ease into sleep with all the 'tools' we had taught her to go to sleep and stay asleep, and she did it independently from that day forth. Only having bad nights when she was sick or teething.
Another lesson learned. We setup our routine that worked for our family, stuck to it as best we could (we didn't ever start any habits that we didn't want to continue)... and persisted. We didn't go out much at night for fear of upsetting this routine, but, it kept us sane and paid dividends with two great sleepers.
Unfortunately for us, by the time they were 10-11 months old, we all caught the flu. Yep, the proper/"real" flu. K ended up with pneumonia by the time they were a year old, and even the adults took weeks to recover, particularly my hubby who had three weeks off work, let alone the torture of going back when still physically weak after that. This first sickness was the beginning of some major ongoing problems for her over the next couple of years, including hospitalisations and six months straight with antibiotics and finally within that time, a formal diagnosis that she had asthma and needed steroidal treatment to keep her lungs open/free from infection.
K ended up having low muscle tone in her face, I persisted with the Paed that something was wrong there too... I wish that I'd pushed earlier when I first felt there was a problem, but again, hindsight! I know not to do that again. She came good with 18 months or so of speech therapy and you wouldn't know that she had any trouble now at over 6.5. Infact, she is doing fantastically well at school in Grade 1 now, excelling in reading, writing and creating. However, it took me pushing the Paed to get the referral and to get confirmation that there was a problem beyond "normal" delays that some of the premature babies may have. The Speech Therapist said on her first consult that K was potentially at the level of an 18 month old child, yet she was three months short of three years old. She picked things up quicker than most, and would sit through an hour solid of activities even though it was mentally taxing - her concentration and comprehension never missed a beat.
By this time I was getting better each year with investigating things further when I felt like something was wrong.
So, when news came that our little surprise was coming into our lives last year, it was one of the things on my mind from early on to avoid history repeating itself. I have written about
the twins journey is a blog post which can explain some of the trauma I felt from their delivery, and I do think this impacted on their feeding and so much more. On my confidence to speak out. On my mental stability in an already challenging situation with two babies at once.
What I didn't know, was how much my plans around her entrance and first weeks of life would impact so much on us in immeasurable ways.
I have tried to not let hindsight bring me down, though it tries to sneak in all the time. Instead, I have tried to learn from the past and not let it repeat itself. For me to make my own decisions as a mother, what works for us, what is right for our child, and when to keep pushing and asking for help (professionally or otherwise).
As a parent, I truly believe that we should trust our guts a lot more, we know our kids better than the next person, so if you think there is something wrong. Trust that.
