[0:00 – 1:19]
Meg Faure: Before we dive in, if you find value in these honest conversations about parenting, please won’t you take a moment to follow or to subscribe to the podcast. It is the easiest way for you to support the show and to make sure that you never miss an episode. And if you think someone you love could benefit from the chat today, please share it with them. It could just be the nudge that they need. In this episode of Sense by Meg Faure, we are joined by media personality and mum of twins, Zoë Brown. And of course, our resident twin care expert, Tasha Perreard. For an honest look at life with 12-week-old babies, we talk about night wakings and bottle battles, all the way through to balancing personalities and finding rhythm. In this episode, you will learn more about the realities of formula feeding, including how a bottle teat can make a real difference, and also how closely you should follow formula tin quantities. We also talk about how babies’ different temperaments and sensory profiles can already be picked up at this tender age. We talk about the truth about awake windows and also why rigid routines actually really don’t work for all babies. We will also learn about what to expect at 12 weeks, from cooing and smiling and catnaps, to the first signs of sibling interaction. So whether you are parenting twins, or just trying to understand baby sleep and feeding rhythms, this episode is packed with wisdom, warmth, and practical tips for thriving through early parenthood. So tune in, don’t go away.
[1:20 – 2:01]
Announcer: Welcome to Sense by Meg Faure, the podcast that’s brought to you by ParentSense, the app that takes guesswork out of parenting. If you’re a new parent, then you are in good company. Your host, Meg Faure, is a well-known OT, infant specialist, and the author of eight parenting books. Each week, we’re going to spend time with new mums and dads, just like you, to chat about the week’s wins, the challenges, and the questions of the moment. Subscribe to the podcast, download the ParentSense app, and catch Meg here every week to make the most of that first year of your little one’s life. And now, meet your host.
[2:05 – 3:14]
Meg Faure: Welcome back, mums and dads. It is always wonderful to have you join us here each week, as we explore and navigate the highs and lows of early parenting. And as you know, some weeks we have an expert who joins us, and some weeks we have a mum who joins us and takes us through her journey with questions for me. And today is a fabulous episode because we have one of both. Today, we are joined again by media personality and mum to twins, Zoë Brown. Welcome, Zoë.
Zoë Brown: Oh, Meg, it’s so great to have these chats. I learn so much with each and every chat.
Meg Faure: Yeah, and actually all the other mums do too, because these little ones go through exactly the same things at each age and stage. So thank you for sharing your journey with us. And alongside Zoë and I is Tasha Perreard, who is an incredible well-baby nurse in Cape Town. She is a twin mum herself, and has kind of carved out a little bit of a niche and a speciality of caring for mums of twins and helping them care for their babies. So Tasha, it’s really awesome to have you join us here today.
Tasha Perreard: Thank you. It’s so lovely to be here again. I’m enjoying this being part of my regular monthly chats with you guys.
[3:14 – 3:28]
Meg Faure: Yeah, it’s really awesome. And it’s lovely to hear kind of the progression as we go along. One of the episodes dropped yesterday, and I was having a good listen to it and just loved hearing the journey. At that point, they were six weeks old. Zoë, how old are they today?
[3:29 – 3:52]
Zoë Brown: We are 12 weeks old. Can you believe it? They are fast approaching that three-month mark. And these boys could not be any more different. It is, it’s kind of laughable, but it’s actually so sweet, because that’s what I always wanted when it came to twins. I was grateful they weren’t identical. I always said I want to celebrate the individuality, and boy, are these kids individuals.
[3:53 – 4:12]
Meg Faure: Totally different. I know, I saw the most gorgeous little post that you did yesterday of them lying next to each other, and the one’s lying absolutely dead still, and the other one’s got his hand on the other one’s hand and kind of scratching a bit. And I could just see the one has got all the movement and curiosity and social butterfly features, and the other one is just quiet and chilled. Is that what you’re finding?
[4:13 – 4:50]
Zoë Brown: That is exactly it. And my little social one is the one that, weirdly enough, still loves to sleep a lot. Whereas his brother, even though he’s very chilled, he’s starting to really show he’s ready for longer awake windows. So I’m trying to juggle getting them to nap together, but now you can only resettle a baby so many times before you have to be like, okay, maybe we’re not ready for a nap right now. And then, weirdly enough, which I also quite find interesting, is when the one is really unsettled, the other one sleeps through the noise. So they don’t wake each other up.
[4:50 – 5:18]
Meg Faure: Yeah, very interesting. I mean, the last time we chatted, Zoë, your mom was here, and you were chatting about what’s the benefits of keeping them on the same schedule, but then actually you had the, well, not the luxury of it. It was amazing to have your mom there, and she took one for the night, and you took the other one for the night, because they were on slightly different schedules. Now that you’re back by yourself, are you kind of getting them back onto the same schedule, or what’s happening with the two of them now?
[5:19 – 6:36]
Zoë Brown: What we realised with me being, with my mom being here was, in the mornings we would like have coffee, and we’d catch up, and we were like, so how did your baby sleep last night? And she’ll give me like, okay, he fed at this time and this time. And they were literally 20 minutes, if not, apart. So I kind of realised now that, now that we’re all under one roof, and we’re forcing each other to all sleep together, when the one gets fussy, and I look at the time, and I’m like, okay, they are ready for a feed, then I’ll wake the other, because he would naturally have woken up 20 minutes later. But if the one is slightly unsettled, and I’m like, oh guys, we can stretch it a little bit. I just pop the dummy in, and then we do get an extra hour or so. And then when the one fusses, the other one, when they both fuss, I’m like, okay, it’s ready for the next midnight, or in the middle of the night feed. But as far as feeds are going, we are still during the day, pretty much every three, three and a half hours they feed. But in the evenings, we’ve really been getting good stretches. So if we do the bed and bath time routine, every night’s slightly different, but it’s generally between six and 8 p.m., then their first feed will only be at one, two in the morning, and then when we get up again.
[6:36 – 6:36]
Meg Faure: Wow, that’s amazing.
[6:37 – 6:42]
Zoë Brown: So we are getting longer stretches at night, but during the day, it comes at a cost.
[6:42 – 6:42]
Meg Faure: Very regular.
[6:43 – 6:44]
Zoë Brown: So very short.
[6:44 – 6:50]
Meg Faure: Yeah, and are you going to bed early? Are you forcing yourself to go to bed early so you can also have that long stretch at the beginning of the night?
[6:52 – 7:15]
Zoë Brown: It only benefits not too early, because I think it’s for myself and my husband, it’s just so wonderful when we do do bed and bath early to have that time to connect and not have to do the baby dance, the bath dance. But then on the evenings where we do have dinner first and then wake them for their bath and bedtime routine, then we really, we go to bed pretty much straight after they go to bed.
[7:16 – 7:24]
Meg Faure: Wonderful. And then when they’re waking up in the night at one, do they feed and just kind of go back to sleep or are they getting quite settled now?
[7:25 – 8:23]
Zoë Brown: They’re very good with the evening feeds. We also do only put the night light on. My husband is still very too chatty with them. We’re like, we mustn’t entertain them at this time. But they do settle quite quickly, which has been a blessing. So if I check the time, it takes us a good 30 minutes from waking up, feeding them, checking nappies and then putting them down. There was one evening where the one woke up slightly earlier and when you resettle and you resettle and he just wouldn’t settle, I was like, okay, I’ll feed you. But his brother was sleeping so well and I just thought to myself, oh, I’m not going to wake him. Let’s just see how it goes. And as I put the one down, the other one went “eh” and I was like, okay, I might as well feed you now so that we can stay on the same schedule. But without trying, they naturally have stayed pretty much on par with the same schedule.
[8:23 – 8:24]
Meg Faure: Wonderful.
[8:24 – 8:45]
Meg Faure: That’s so great. And it’s so difficult. You said, you know, you said your husband not to kind of be too chatty, it’s so difficult not to interact in the middle of the night when they’re looking so cute and they start smiling at you and they should be starting to kind of coo and almost chatter to you. It’s very difficult to ignore those, that cuteness at one o’clock in the morning. Difficult not to interact when they’re so sweet.
[8:45 – 8:55]
Zoë Brown: Yeah. No, no. I just said to him, because we each are in charge of a baby and we alternate each night and I just said, if it’s your baby, you need to get up even though the cot’s on my side of the bed.
[8:57 – 9:51]
Meg Faure: Amazing. It sounds like you’re navigating that amazingly. I mean, Tasha, I’m really interested just to go back to what Zoë first raised around the awake times. And, you know, you get kind of two different major theories, you know, one around having a very strict routine for babies. So like every, the baby goes to sleep at exactly this time. And then of course you get your awake windows where you’re watching those awake times, which is certainly what I do lean more towards. And, but those awake windows when they were kind of put out were very much almost like lines in the sand, like every baby, it’ll be about, you know, for newborns, 15 minutes to an hour that they would then be awake for and then go back to sleep. But Zoë’s talking about quite a variation, it sounds like, between the twins’ awake times. What are your thoughts on that? I mean, I know, obviously it’s got to do with their sensory personalities and how stimulated and overstimulated they’re becoming. But what are your thoughts on that, Tasha? And how can Zoë navigate that for day sleeps?
[9:52 – 11:18]
Tasha Perreard: Yeah, I mean, it’s such a tricky one to navigate. The thing is, I remember when I had my twins, it was all about getting them to a routine. And I was reading a book called Gina Ford and I was reading it. And I thought, okay, my kids are going to follow this routine to a T, but I very quickly realised that both of them didn’t follow that to a T. And it completely stressed me out because I kept on thinking, what am I doing wrong? Why is my baby, why are they not following the routine? Why are they not sticking into this kind of set routine of what they should be doing every day? And I quickly realised every single baby has got different sleep needs and sleep windows. So it’s so much easier to put the babies to sleep. And then once they wake up, you can look at the time and go, okay, right, this is the time now. We know that our babies can stay awake for two hours at a time, but it’s tricky when the one wants to stay awake for two hours and the other one wants to stay awake for two and a half hours. So it is navigating that sweet spot because it’s so difficult to put a baby to sleep who’s overtired. And it’s so difficult to put a baby to sleep who is undertired. So you kind of got to mix the two, almost like a 15 minute window. You’ve got to experiment, potentially bringing the one awake window a little bit 15 minutes earlier, the other ones pushed a little bit 15 minutes later. And you’re just kind of experimenting every day and seeing what works. And also, I don’t know if you’ve noticed that their awake windows are far longer at the end of the day than they are at the beginning of the day.
Meg Faure: Yeah, so I was just about to say that, Tasha.
Tasha Perreard: Yeah, so I mean, always in the morning, I mean, they’ve, you know, they’ve slept kind of the longest at nighttime and then they wake up and then an hour later, they want to go back to sleep again. And then at the end of the day, they can go, you know, two hours.
[11:18 – 11:20]
Meg Faure: Yeah, and it’s interesting.
[11:20 – 13:42]
Meg Faure: I mean, just to add to that, Zoë, I’ve had a look at the ParentSense app for your boys because I keep their routine on my app, of course. And their awake time for this age is 60 to 80 minutes. So kind of an hour to an hour and a half would be right. And so exactly to Tasha’s point, and I was going to mention that, that very often the morning awake time will actually be quite religiously an hour. And then towards the later part of the day, in fact, especially that last nap of the day, if they’re going down at, let’s say, seven o’clock in the evening, as an example, you would actually subtract the 90 minutes, which would get us back to 5:30 and they would need to be awake at that time in order to have a good awake time just before they go to bed and they’ll cope well with that. So that’s kind of, that’s the way that I use awake time. So I would watch what time they wake in the morning, put them down, if it’s before 12 p.m. midday, I’ll put them down within an hour, at about an hour after they’ve woken up and in the afternoon to stretch it to 80 minutes to an hour and a half. But having said that, even that with that variation, which is that kind of variation of their awake windows for morning and afternoon, we still definitely see a variation of sensory personalities. And I just wanted to check, is Jordan the one who’s the most social and Luke’s the little one who’s a little bit more slow to warm up and quieter? Is that the way it works? Is Jordan the one who’s the most social and Luke’s the little one who’s a little bit more slow to warm up and quieter? Is that the way it works? The opposite away.
[13:43 – 13:44]
Zoë Brown: So Luke, yeah.
[13:44 – 14:52]
Zoë Brown: So we, with our last episode established that Luke is my sensory sensitive individual and I’ve been very big on not overstimulating him and he’s the one that still loves to sleep a lot. So it’s perfect because Jordan, he wakes up so when he doesn’t resettle and I look at the clock and it’s maybe 50 minutes before they feed, I’ll get him up, I’ll entertain him a little bit and then he tends to want to go to sleep as soon as that bottle is done, whereas Luke is awake for a little bit, upright, and then he’ll go down for his nap. So that’s kind of how our awake windows are working, but I’m not finding the afternoons is actually when they give me the best sleep and we have to wake them for bed and bath time and the morning is when they’re little cat nappers and I try and get them to stretch or at least connect those sleep cycles. Some days I’m winning at it, today was just one of those days where I’m like, I need more coffee.
[14:53 – 14:54]
Meg Faure: I’m going to need a glass of wine tonight.
[14:54 – 15:08]
Meg Faure: Oh, babe. Do you find that for the cat naps in the morning, do they always wake up at a certain time? I mean, is it always at 40 minutes or 35 minutes or is it variable every day?
[15:09 – 15:48]
Zoë Brown: It’s generally that I’ve noticed after they’re, because they would wake up at about 6:30 for a bottle and they don’t make that one hour. So then they go down for a morning nap and that’s generally a shorter one because they’ll feed again at about nine o’clock and that’s kind of, I’ve just been focusing on the goal posts have been the feeds. So if they feed at nine, they’re going to want to feed at 12 and then I kind of judge their naps on, okay, you’ve actually slept enough and it’s not too long of a stretch until your next bottle. So then I’m happy to keep you awake because then they’re not overtired.
[15:49 – 16:17]
Meg Faure: Yeah, absolutely. I think what’s interesting, you used a word there that’s quite commonly thrown around, which is cat naps. Somebody mentioned the cat nap piece and I think, you know, when you get very, very short sleeps and sometimes particularly with our more sensitive babies, we get like a 15 or 20 minute sleep and they’re awake. Those ones, I do encourage moms to really work towards getting them to sleep a little longer and the reason is that they’re not really having a full sleep cycle then. So then we would work with things like white noise or deep pressure with a weighted blanket or, you know, keeping the room absolutely dark, dark, dark.
[16:18 – 16:44]
Meg Faure: You know, all of those type of things, and then also even the patting to get them back into the next sleep cycle. But if it’s kind of 40 minutes, which is quite classic, that is actually a sleep cycle for a little one, 45 minutes is a sleep cycle. And so you’ll often have to work very hard if you want to try and get them back to sleep. So Zoë, when you talk about short sleeps, are you talking about that 40 minutes and more, or are you talking about less than 30 minutes?
[16:45 – 16:49]
Zoë Brown: It’s 40 minutes or more. I think I’m just missing the longer naps.
[16:51 – 17:37]
Meg Faure: Exactly. Yeah. And that’s, you know, that’s such a classic thing that happens at this age, because we’ve got quite used to having them kind of sleeping for longer stretches, but actually it’s very typical that they only do a 45 minutes with some of their sleeps. And actually, as they go from now until six months old, by the time they’re six months old, they will only have one sleep a day that is actually longer than 45 minutes. It’s very unusual that you get a baby’s having kind of an hour and a half and an hour and a half. It’s more likely kind of a 45, an hour and a half, and then another 45 when they get to about six months. So they’re going in the right direction. And I don’t know, I mean, Tasha, you can give your input, but I don’t know that I would be fighting to get them back to link those sleep cycles for more than one sleep a day. So if they’re doing it for one sleep, that’s, that would, I would say is pretty typical. Tasha, would you agree?
[17:38 – 18:26]
Tasha Perreard: Yeah, absolutely. I think, yeah, exactly. You’re spot on. I think one kind of shorter nap in the morning, at least one long sleep in the day and then a shorter nap in the afternoon. And I think a lot of people take that afternoon nap. A lot of people put their babies in a pram or a carrier. I find like the afternoon naps are more difficult to settle babies. So it’s quite a nice time to put them in a pram and take them for a walk around the neighbourhood or put them in a carrier and take them for a walk. And then, yeah, then they’ll kind of have that one last nap in the day.
[18:26 – 19:35]
Meg Faure: Yeah, and on that one, Tasha, I mean, a very good point there. You know, Zoë, we typically see that that morning sleep, that hour after they’ve woken up in the morning, they will fall asleep relatively easy, which you are pointing out. Then they have this one sleep where they have this lovely linking of sleep cycles. And then that third one, exactly to Tasha’s point, because it’s a sleep that’s actually going to be the first sleep to be dropped, which they’ll, which they drop a little bit closer to nine months. And that sleep really, we don’t worry about habits or about anything. We just say, just get it done. It doesn’t matter. You know, for my little ones, sometimes I’d put them in the car on the way to kind of pick and pay in the late afternoon to do a shop. And I knew they would fall asleep on the way in the car, or I’d use it as my exercise time, putting them in the pram and walking around the block or into the carrier, because those are the ones where it really doesn’t matter. Whereas the other ones, you do want to start to have some sort of sleep and consistent sleep space, because what we do find is that little ones who sleep well later on in life. So, you know, as they get towards the toddler years, who still have that nice midday sleep and a good bedtime routine, they’re little ones who’ve had a fairly consistent sleep space for most of their sleeps with the exception of that kind of late afternoon.
[19:35 – 20:15]
Tasha Perreard: Yeah. I think a lot of people also ask me, like, should I wake my baby after sleeping? You know, everyone’s so terrified to wake a sleeping baby, but I always, the one sleep that I do recommend waking from is that last afternoon sleep. And that’s exactly what you’re doing Zoë. So you’re saying you want them down at 7, 7:30 and then yeah, I would definitely wake them by five so that, you know, because I mean, some people then wake their baby up at six and then they’re just pushing the bedtime later and later and later. So even if they have a 20, 30 minute nap in the late afternoon as that last nap, I think just don’t feel bad about waking them from that late afternoon sleep so that you can set the cycle up for the, for the bedtime routine, it makes such a huge difference.
[20:16 – 20:31]
Meg Faure: That’s lovely advice, Tasha. So I think let’s talk a little bit now about their development because at 12 months, 12 weeks old now. So that means that they are smiling regularly. Are they starting to coo or make any noises or they’re still not quite getting that well-coordinated?
[20:32 – 21:28]
Zoë Brown: They are making the cute little coo noises. My husband loves doing the little sound of “coo, coo”. And then Luke has been the quickest to, to mimic pursing his little lips like that and like trying to make the sound. And Jordan is getting there, but they just so, like, I don’t know what it is about dads, like moms, it’s probably because they’re with moms most of the day, but the minute dads are there, they just like so fascinated with everything that dad does. But they are, they are mimicking, they trying to mimic him. It’s very cute to see the little lips going that way. Jordan took forever to crack a smile, but now he’s very generous with his smiles. And it’s just so beautiful to see. They’re starting to, to laugh, but it’s that silent laugh. So there’s no sounds coming out yet. So it’s just these gummy smiles coming at us with, you can see they’re laughing, but there’s no sounds.
[21:28 – 21:32]
Meg Faure: And have they started to put their hands to their mouth and suck on their little hands?
[21:33 – 21:49]
Zoë Brown: Not too much. Although Jordan is starting to drool. He is starting to bubbles, like blow bubbles. Luke is the one that has taken his hand to his mouth, but not really. Do you think the dummy is stopping them from doing that?
[21:50 – 23:10]
Meg Faure: Well, look, they will definitely start to explore their hands more and more. And it, and it often happens that around about this age, you’ll probably find that tomorrow you find them with their hands in their mouth all the time. And it’s quite interesting because often moms will say, oh my goodness, my little ones has started teething because they’ve got their hands in their mouth. But in actual fact, it’s just a developmental phase of starting to explore the haptic qualities, their qualities that, you know, their touch qualities around their hands. And it’s actually a very, very important milestone because we need to have a good awareness of our hands in order to have fine motor control. And we do that by actually popping them in the mouth because we’re getting feedback from our mouth and our hands at the same time to the brain and the brain goes, okay, I’m learning about this. So hand to mouth is very important from that perspective. And it’s also very important from the perspective of self-soothing because they’ll start to use their hands either around their face or their mouth or in their ear, even their ears, just to be able to kind of soothe themselves a little bit. If the dummy is consistently in their mouth, yes, that potentially could stop that just because they’re not needing to get their hands to their mouth for soothing. They’re still in an age where I don’t ever worry too much about dummies at this age when they’re older, kind of after a year, then I don’t like dummies for awake times just because I think it can impact language, but I don’t really have a problem with dummy use at this point. Tasha, what would you say in terms of dummy use at this point in their lives?
[23:11 – 24:39]
Tasha Perreard: No, I mean, I talk with two hats here. So my mom hat is like, you keep that dummy for as long as you want to because I know it makes such a huge difference. And then the lactation consultant sort of, we know that obviously dummies are not great for oral development but at this age, for me, I don’t feel like it interferes with anything at the moment. I mean, yes, definitely the older they get, you want to take it out for awake time and obviously as they start talking, but it’s amazing. So many parents now are so aware of that. I think so many parents are so terrified of, yeah, like the oral development, like poor oral development and they’re so much more aware. So it’s, and also, you know, your baby will, once they need comforting, they need that dummy. It makes such a huge difference to them and to you. And to take that away is actually quite distressing for them. So, I mean, that suck reflex is such a huge comfort for them really. I find it’s all the first two years of their life, but you definitely start to minimise it the older they get once they start talking. And, but I mean, also in terms of exploring their little hands, I mean, the dummy is not going to be nearly as exciting as their little hands. So when they start exploring and they’re kind of chewing and they’re going to actually spit the dummy out because they’re not actually looking for comfort. They’re looking at, you know, they’re looking for your exploration of what’s happening with their little hands. And then eventually, you know, the older they get, then they start putting their feet in their hands and that’s even more exciting. So they can reach their feet in their mouths.
[24:39 – 24:40]
Meg Faure: That’s my favourite.
[24:40 – 24:41]
Tasha Perreard: Yeah. It’s so cute.
[24:41 – 24:51]
Meg Faure: So Zoë, we’ve only got a few minutes left with Tasha. Are there any questions that kind of have popped up over the course of the last couple of weeks that you’ve thought, oh, when I chat to Tasha, I definitely need to ask her this.
[24:52 – 25:18]
Zoë Brown: I would love to know, Tasha, especially from twins, when do they start almost recognising each other? Because they kind of coexisting in my mind. Luke will look at Jordan and it looks like he wants to like get a response. And Jordan’s just like, it’s like the cats. They just don’t care about each other yet. I think I’m just more intrigued to figure out like, when will they actually realise there’s two of them?
[25:19 – 26:41]
Tasha Perreard: Yeah. I mean, I guess at the moment, you know, they’re coming. So when did they turn 12 weeks?
Zoë Brown: They turned 12 weeks on Wednesday.
Tasha Perreard: So, okay. Yeah. So they’re just 12 weeks. I mean, I guess you think about the first 12 weeks, we’re still in that fourth trimester. So they’re very much still kind of cocooning and coming out of that now, but very much still, yeah, they kind of still feel like they’re in the womb, I guess. So the older they get, I definitely find by about four months, they can definitely start interacting. It’s quite fun to kind of start, you know, if one’s lying down and getting the other one and kind of like pulling them towards them and taking them away and almost like start trying to play like peekaboo a little bit. But what’s so lovely when they turn six months is that then they, well, a lot of babies start sitting independently. And then when they start sitting independently and actually facing each other and popping some toys in the middle of them, and they start passing, kind of playing together, that’s I find when the more interaction starts when they’re actually facing each other more. But I mean, they’re very much aware of each other. You know, you think they actually don’t know a world really without each other. So subconsciously, I think they’re so aware of that other little presence next to them. So even though they’re not interacting directly now, you’ll definitely find kind of in the next couple of months, they start definitely interacting a little bit more. And it’s so cute when that happens.
[26:41 – 28:06]
Zoë Brown: I’ve got one more, if I can just take advantage of Tasha here for a second. With the bottles, we’re now exclusively formula feeding and we use the Avent, Philips Avent bottles and size teats one and two. We’ve been bouncing between the two. And it was last week I looked at these teats and I was like, oh, they are broken. So we changed the teats and we’ve now put the size three teats on, which is perfect for their age between three and six months. And I found that the babies aren’t wasting as much because the milk would drip down their mouth. And I think we probably fed them with these broken teats a lot longer than before I realised it, how much milk they were wasting. And now that they’re sucking from age appropriate teats that are working, they have to work a little harder to get the milk. And I find that they’re not finishing the 150 millilitres we would offer to the point where I’ve now downgraded both of them to 120 mils. And it was only once Jordan was ready to finish his bottle and showed signs that he was ready for more that I now give him 150 mils, but Luke is still 120. Is that normal for, I mean, was it more wasting milk from the broken teats or is it normal for them to kind of go through these fluctuations with the amount of milk they would drink?
[28:07 – 28:57]
Tasha Perreard: Yeah. So I mean, I guess what I’m thinking is that if the flow of the milk was so fast with the broken teats, they might’ve been drinking more milk than they actually needed. So the milk was just coming out so fast that actually maybe they didn’t need 150 mils. It was just that they were getting it so quickly. So maybe now actually with the appropriate size bottle, they’re actually drinking exactly what they need. Because you think when a bottle is coming out so fast, if the flow is just keeping on going, keeping on going, keeping on going, they’re probably just drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, whereas with 120 it’s slower and then they’re actually realising, okay, this is kind of enough now. My tummy, my little tummy’s full. Um, I mean, how, how many feeds are they having in 24 hours then? So three in the three hourly in a day and then only one at night. So is that six, six feeds? Is that right?
[28:57 – 29:05]
Zoë Brown: Let me quickly count. If we do a 6am feed, it’s six, nine, 12, three, six will be the last one. And then one in the middle of the night. So seven feeds. Yeah.
[29:06 – 29:09]
Tasha Perreard: Yeah. And then when you work out, what are their weights now?
[29:10 – 29:32]
Zoë Brown: I’m finding that out next week.
Tasha Perreard: When last did you weigh them?
Zoë Brown: At their, gosh, at their six week checkup. So I really do need to get them weighed with the, with the move. We missed their eight week check-in and, um, I, I’ve got an appointment for next week.
Tasha Perreard: Next Friday, then you can find out.
[29:32 – 29:33]
Meg Faure: Okay.
[29:33 – 31:29]
Meg Faure: Yeah. I think, you know, I think it’s quite interesting because when you’re a formula feeding mom, it can be quite easy to become hung up on the mils because if you’re a breastfeeding mom, you’re not, you can’t be, because you don’t know what volumes it is. But when you breast, when you bottle feeding, you know, it does become about the volumes and the stupid tin says, you know, six scoops, 180 mils or whatever it says. And so then you go, okay, well, that’s it. That’s how much of it must be taking in. But the reality is that, um, I think it’s works in the favour of the formula companies to have a bit of wastage because you go through the tin more quickly. And so, you know, at this age, the range of milk is actually quite wide. It’s as low as 90 mils at some feeds and up to 180 mils at some feeds. So it’s anywhere in that range. So if they’re doing 150 mils, six feeds a day, and some feeds, they do a little bit more and some feeds, they waste a little bit that is just absolutely spot on. And, you know, I think if a baby is consistently doing, let’s say the tin is telling you to do 180 mils and they are consistently wasting 30 mils, I would actually make a little bit less. And then if they’ve finished a bottle ever in a feed completely, the next feed, just bump it up by one scoop, because otherwise you do end up wasting so much. Um, but I think, you know, I mean, Kath McGaw, who I work with so closely, she’s a paediatric dietitian. For us, it’s a lot of what we’ve said with moms. And I know it’s the same for you Tasha, is to try not to be fixated on getting lots of calories, lots of volume, because it doesn’t serve our babies well, it doesn’t serve us well either. And actually, as much as the old historical kind of, you know, fat, chubby babies, a healthy baby has kind of been the way that people think about babies. In actual fact, fat babies are not necessarily the best thing for life for their own health. And so, you know, if they’re on the lower end, and if they, as long as they’re gaining weight, and they’re not crossing lines on the, on the weight graph, and as long as they are thriving and happy and sleeping, you know, then it is actually less about the volume that they’re taking in because they’re thriving.
[31:30 – 32:06]
Tasha Perreard: And we always say, I mean, it’s applicable for when you start solids as well, you know, the parents, you’re choosing what they’re going to eat, but you’re they are choosing how much they’re going to eat. So you’re in charge of what you’re offering. So you’re offering milk, but they are in charge of actually how much they’re going to be drinking. And also the tins, the formula tins, it’s, it’s so frustrating, because, you know, babies are so variable. I mean, a baby, a newborn baby can be born at 2.5 kilogrammes or 4.2 kilogrammes. But they’re guiding you for on the age of the baby, but actually, it’s the weight of the baby. So the guidelines really have to be in relation to how much your baby weighs, not on the age of them.
[32:07 – 32:47]
Meg Faure: Yeah, yeah. So true, Tasha. Well, Zoë, I think that’s probably all we’ve got time for today. It has been absolutely fabulous to chat with you. Thank you for allowing us to be part of your journey and to actually help other moms with the little pieces of advice that Tasha can share with us. So thank you both so much. And I think when we see you in a few weeks time, if it’s going to be a month’s time, you’re going to probably starting, be starting to think about whether or not solids are right. Not that we do start babies on solids that early, but we certainly do start to think about, I wonder what’s going on in terms of nutrition. So I think that’ll probably come up in our next conversation.
Zoë Brown: I’m looking forward to it. Thank you so much, ladies.
Meg Faure: All right, Zoë.
Tasha Perreard: Thanks, Zoë. Thanks, Tasha.
Meg Faure: All right.
Tasha Perreard: Bye.
Meg Faure: Bye.
[32:48 – 32:59]
Announcer: Thanks to everyone who joined us. We will see you the same time next week. Until then, download ParentSense app and take the guesswork out of parenting.
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