Lucy Nicoll always expected to breastfeed her newborn triplets — what she didn't bank on was expressing milk night and day for her tiny babies after they were born a staggering 15 weeks early.
As little Molly, Joshua and Cameron prepare to leave hospital, Nicoll believes providing her milk was the best thing she could do for her babies who were hooked up to machines in the hospital's neonatal intensive-care unit for weeks.
"For me it was the most natural and important thing I could do. It has helped build their immunity, it's good for their digestion and has helped with bonding," the Auckland mum-of-four said.
Nicoll said she began expressing within two hours of waking from the general anaesthetic after giving birth in April.
For the next eight weeks she pumped breastmilk nine times a day. The regime slowed a little when daughter Molly began to suck eight weeks after her birth. The boys followed a few weeks later.
