Clusterfeed

Written by Pat on October 27th, 2008

A long time ago (like 2 weeks), the lactation consultant at the hospital told us to expect a growth spurt from the babies when they were about 10 days old. She warned us that they would be hungry all the time and not to worry, just keep feeding them. At about 10 days, we noticed they both had started eating a lot more and thought they had hit the growth spurt. We were wrong. At about 2.5 weeks (or a couple of days ago) Ella hit the “real” growth spurt and last night Jack did the same.

This is ridiculous. Pretty much every second they’re awake both of them are crying for food (well, Ella cries, Jake squeaks for a while before giving up and letting us know he’s serious). We feed them, they’re quiet for about 10 minutes and then it starts up again. I feel sorry for Shae’s boobs, and I’m starting to worry about the motor in our pump. There was a span of about five hours this afternoon where both of them were wide awake and hungry. Then they slept for about four hours and then woke up screaming for food again. According to Shae’s Internet research this whole eat for hours, sleep for hours thing is called “Cluster feeding”. All I know is it’s super fun.

Of course, this giant increase in the babies’ appetites comes with a bonus: a matching jump in their diaper usage. I thought these little things were crapping a lot before, but this is crazy. On Friday we bought a new 92-pack of diapers. In under 36 hours they went through about 50 of them. Holy crap! Seriously…that’s a crapload of poop. Costco doesn’t carry newborn diapers, and it seems like they don’t make the jumbo packs of them (or at least they don’t have them at Costco or Babies “R” Us). I guess the logic is that people don’t stock up on them because the babies grow out of them so fast. Obviously they need to talk to more twin parents.

In other fun, we took a little family field trip yesterday. Shae and I, Lunchbox, and the twins all piled into the car and headed over to the dog park to get LB some exercise. Shae sat outside at a picnic table and fed the babies (seriously, they are eating constantly) while I took Mr. Box into the park to have some fun. I’m sure everyone will be happy to hear that he didn’t hump any of the other dogs and got nice and dirty.

Oh, Jack’s diaper rash is gone. I guess Butt Paste is more than just a funny name. That’s about it to report right now. I just heard Ella go through diaper 51 so I guess I better go change her.

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