The babies are nearing six months old, and only one of them has ever slept through the night, only once! They each will wake up randomly a few times a night, there is no rhyme or reason to the times they wake up, I have tried charting them and have found no pattern whatsoever! We are very sure to never let them fall asleep while eating or being held, we try to get them to bed at the same time every night, and they only take two naps in the day totaling about 3 to 4 hours. So we finally, after being totally exhausted, decided to just let them cry it out, if it had been less than four hours before they last ate. The first night they cried for 2 and a half hours straight. I'm not exaggerating at all, we watched the clock the entire time! It was horrible. And once they finally stopped, lola woke up after only being asleep for about 20 minutes, but since it had been a little over for hours since she had last ate, I fed her. Was that the right thing to do, or am I just teaching her that she has to cry for two hours for me to finally feed her? I don't know. But at that time of night it made since to me. So after that first night we thought the crying time would decrease a little? Wrong. Same amount of crying only at some totally different time in the night! So here is the big question I have, should I not have them in the same room together? Because one always starts crying before the other and inevitably wakes the other one up. We don't even have another rom on the main level to put one in a different room, but I thought we could maybe put a pack n play in our walk in closet, just til we get this sleep training over with? Is that pointless? Am I just training one to sleep in a different environment and going to have to re train them later? I am really desperate here.
I love these kids... But if mommy and daddy don't get some sleep soon, you may be visiting us at the looney bin!
6 comments:
My babies were not good sleepers at all. Ocean just started sleeping all night consistently at nine months. I'm not sure I would separate them if you plan on putting them back together. We tried crying it out and it didn't work for us. We always rock them to sleep also even though we were told it was a no no and they seem to do okay. Good luck! Sleep deprivation from the twins was one of the hardest things I've ever dealt with!
Hi, lurker here and I have my own sleep issues with my twins who will be 5 months old on Friday but I still wanted to comment.
I am pretty much able to get my twins down between 7:30 and 8 and they sleep in the same room in separate cribs. I have never separated them and they generally do not wake the other one up.
I have one who is more fiesty than the other and last night he cried it out for 12 minutes and then slept 8 hours. The night before last I was not as successful but he did not nap well that day. My commenters told me to let them nap as much as possible during the day and that good naps means a good night of sleep. I think they're right because Mr. Fiesty napped great yesterday.
Also, as I was reading your post, I was thinking your babies were hungry during that 2 1/2 hour CIO session. I've been told they go through growth spurts and I know with mine sometimes I have to feed them only two hours after they just ate.
I hope this helps! And I hope we both have twins sleeping through the night soon! :)
Hi! I didnt know if you would check back for my response to your comment, so I thought I'd pop over and leave it here.
@ Cyndi: We started with baby food at 4 months old and, as they got teeth, started introducing other foods. I want to say that, at about 6-8 months, we started them with puffs. That really helped their food-into-mouth coordination. In the beginning, there was food EVERYWHERE: the floor, on them, anywhere but their mouths, LOL. Then they slowly got better. By 9-10 months, we would give them soft foods (like veggies and breads) from the table. We took them to restaurants and would usually order them steamed veggies and cut them into tiny pieces. By a year old, they could sit at the table (home or restaurant) and get the majority of their food in their mouth. Now, at 16.5 months, they eat pretty much everything we do, although I usually cut things into (if soft) half inch pieces and (for meat or stringier textures) quarter inch pieces.
Our twins slept together. They were born at 27w5d and spent 9w in the NICU so they came home 2 weeks before their 40w EDD. For a month (until they were 3mo chronologically), they coslept with us in an Arm's Reach Co-Sleeper. From 3 months old-7 months old, they shared a crib in our nursery, which adjoined to our bedroom. At 7 months old, we transitioned them to their own (twin) beds (they sleep on the floor), as we advocate the Montessori method. 10 months later, they still sleep in their own beds in their own rooms.
We've never done CIO. Have you read Dr. Sears? When I was on bedrest and when the kids were in the NICU, I read a lot of him and, since we planned on practicing attachment parenting, his words really resonated with us. I found that, utilizing his advice, we had 3 month olds who slept through the night and, even now, these two only get up when they are bothered by teething issues.
I totally get that. The two on one thing sucks when both want/need you at the same time. And, as they get bigger, there is only so much of dual holding you can do! (B&M are near 50lbs together so I can only cart both of them around for so long). We do a lot of snuggles as a triad, or I will sit on the floor and one will lean against me while the other is comforted, but it is so tough! And, inevitably, there is going to be crying because you have to go to the one who needs you most at that moment and the other is going to be upset. For bedtime, we do rock them and snuggle them, and, honestly, our kids sleep great and all night. Our doctor recommended against it, but it is what works for our family, so that is what we do. (Her concern was that they wouldnt stay asleep once put down, which is a no issue with ours)
We separated our twins. We only have one extra room (an office which becomes a guest room when relatives visit), so my son has often slept in the living room in a pack'n'play. They actually still wake each other up if we let one of them cry long enough, so it's a pain.
We did sleep train them. I don't remember well now, but we went in and gave them pacifiers instead of feeding them if it had been less than four hours since the previous feed. We were supposed to gradually decrease the number of ounces they ate, but we never got that far as giving them pacifiers worked wonders in getting them to stop waking up.
Now they've started waking again, usually only once per night, or sometimes just super early in the morning (like 5am, which sucks, because sometimes that means they're up for the day), and we're struggling to figure out how to handle it.
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