Angelina Jolie discusses breastfeeding twins
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If you have ever struggled with breastfeeding, you can sympathize with 33-year old actress Angelina Jolie. The star, most recently in The Changeling, discussed nursing four-month old twins (and other mum wisdom) with British talk show GMTV.
To put it simply, “It’s very hard,” she said. That didn’t stop her from appearing on the cover of W magazine, breastfeeding one of her twins. The picture, shot by boyfriend, Brad Pitt, was one of many featured photos.
Despite her impression that the so-called football hold is “a lot harder than it looks in the books,” Miss Jolie still managed to nurse both babies for three months, sometimes doubling up in the football hold, and sometimes taking turns. But, as many moms have discovered, she claims it just took a lot of time, and three months was as long as she could go.
Jolie became pregnant with babies 5 and 6 while shooting the film The Changeling. Kudos to Miss Jolie for being a role model in several respects. I commend any mom who takes the effort and time to breastfeed any baby, let alone multiples. A good friend of mine has twins and she barely eeked out 6 weeks breastfeeding them. I also think nursing is especially challenging for moms who work outside their homes, and Miss Jolie is certainly a busy working mom. Finally, she also has several other children vying for her attention. I struggled for several weeks with my second child, and she was just a singleton, with an 11-year old brother, and I am working at home.? It would be tempting for me (if I were in her shoes) to take the easy road and hire a wetnurse, or at least someone to bottle feed for her.
If YOU have breastfed your multiples, you are my hero, too! Way to go! How did you manage?
ckay says...
Thank you for this. I am a mother of multiples, boy/girl twins born 6 weeks early. From the very beginning, we struggled to breastfeed - from learning how to suck while still in the Special Care Nursery, then to latch, and then multiple infections in both my breasts, along with a strict schedule of feeding both babies every 3 hours, for the first 6 weeks. I constantly felt bad, guilty that I had to supplement with formula, like I wasn’t a good mother and I wasn’t providing for my babies. We got through it, and even after returning to work full time at the end of our 3rd month, I managed to continue breastfeeding for 3 more months. Morning nursing, pumping multiple times a day at work, and then nursing again at home in the evenings. I now look back at that time and feel very proud that I was able to stick it out for 6 months, even though my babies were never exclusively breastmilk fed.
Science-mom says...
Kudos, CK and Angelina. I only managed to do it for a couple of weeks and ended up pumping for 4 months. I also had to supplement since my twins were underweight preemies but between my breastmilk and fortified formula, they caught up in no time. I would have continued pumpting except that my GP told me to stop for (my) health reasons (sigh).