Taking one for the team. Arie Luyendyk Jr. has been helping his wife, Lauren Burnham, amid her breast-feeding issues.
“Really tough last few days. Lauren is struggling with mastitis, [a breast tissue infection],” the former Bachelor, 39, captioned a Tuesday, July 20, Instagram Story selfie. “I was up all weekend with the babies. Surviving over here haha.”
![Bachelor’s Lauren Burnham ‘Is Struggling With Mastitis’: It’s ‘Really Tough'](/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Bachelors-Lauren-Burnham-Struggling-With-Mastitis-Its-Really-Tough-002.jpg?w=1000&quality=86&strip=all)
The social media upload came one month after the Shades of Rose designer, 29, welcomed their twins, Senna and Lux. The Virginia native shared YouTube footage of herself nursing her son after giving birth in June, going on to share a pumping photo the following month.
The Bachelor season 22 contestant, who is also the mother of daughter Alessi, 2, was “nervous” about breast-feeding two babies at once, she exclusively told Us Weekly in May.
“I’ll wake up and feed one,” Burnham explained at the time. “After that, I’ll just hand that baby off to Arie who can change them and get them back to sleep. And then I’ll feed the other one. … I’m not really sure how that’s going to go.”
The then-expectant star added, “I’ve heard twins are especially difficult because you’re not sleeping as much as with a newborn. One will wake up and want to eat, and then they’ll wake the other one up and they’ll want to eat at the same time. I just see that going downhill really fast.”
When first nursing Alessi in 2019, the new mom exclusively told Us that nursing “looked easy” — but it “definitely” had not been.
![Bachelor’s Lauren Burnham ‘Is Struggling With Mastitis’: It’s ‘Really Tough'](/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Bachelors-Lauren-Burnham-Struggling-With-Mastitis-Its-Really-Tough-001.jpg?w=1000&quality=47&strip=all)
“No one told me that if you’re a first-time mom, sometimes your milk doesn’t come in right away,” Burnham explained. “So I had to supplement her with formula, and I was really upset about that. I didn’t give up on it, and I went to a lactation specialist when I was dealing with painful engorgement issues. She helped teach my baby how to latch properly and after that, everything’s been great.”
Luyendyk Jr. praised his wife at the time, calling the process “difficult.”
He and Burnham wed in January 2019 in Hawaii. The Bachelor Nation members suffered a miscarriage in May 2020 and honored their pregnancy loss in their twins’ nursery.