Breastfeeding at night/cosleeping questions

Hi all, I EBF my 3.5 mo old twins (they were 38 weekers) and I'm trying to find out the best way I can get sleep at night.

The twins sleep in their nursery and I would love to be able to sleep in my bed and get up and feed them at night, then go back to my bed but finding this isn't working. I have trouble going back to sleep after their first feeding which could be around 12- 1 (they go down at 7:15 ish at night, I go to sleep in my bed at 8). DD is my crappier sleeper and always wakes first. I nurse in this comfy recliner in our nursery and will usually doze off for awhile. I then nurse DS since I'm already there. I'm done by close to 2, but lately DD has been waking up at 3, not really crying, but nursing is the only thing that gets her back to sleep. If I put her back in her rock n play she then wakes up again around 5:30 and will only stay asleep if she is briefly nursed and I hold her - she'll wake up if i put her back in her rock n play.

I am finding I am able to sleep easily if I am sleeping with a baby. I just lay back in the recliner with DD and we both sleep with her in the cradle position. I've done this after the 3 AM wake/feed. I really hate to get in the habit of doing this but I think its the only way I can sleep.

DS has been waking up around 5:30 - 6 and since I'm already holding DD, the last couple days I've had to do a reclined tandem nursing with both lying on my chest and they both doze until 7 am.

Looking to see how others handle cosleeping/EBF when the twins are still waking at night, especially if you have trouble going back to sleep. Do others find it easier to sleep with a baby in your arms after nursing them? When were you able to start sleeping your bed again with the twins in the nursery -when they were STTN? Looking for any advice here.

 

I use a co-sleeper attached to my bed but a PNP would work just as well. I try to start off the night with both of them in the co-sleeper and then bring them into bed with me when they get hungry. If I'm still awake when they are done, I put them back. Otherwise I just trade out babies when the other one wakes up. I'm a really light sleeper and I've taken certain precautions for having them sleep in the bed. I figure a sane mommy is pretty important too. With my oldest, I started out the way you do (with feeding her in a chair or on the sofa and then putting her back). The problem I ran into there was I got so exhausted that I would fall asleep in the chair and I was scared I would drop her.

I can't say when these 2 will STTN (they are only 2 months and I can tell it will still be a while for them). My oldest didn't do what would allow me to STTN (8 - 12 hours) until she was about a year. But she did cut way back on her number of wakings before then. So I would only have to get up once, feed her, and put her back down and still be able to get a decent amount of sleep myself. I'm not quite sure how well that will work with twins but we'll find out!

 

When I was nursing my twins we had a king size bed (actually two twin size beds with a special matress pad the joines them and has a special strip to even out the connection a bit--those bed became my twins beds when they were big enough.) I would side nurse them and fall back to sleep while nursing that way, when the other one woke up then I would change position to side nurse the other one then fell back to sleep that way. I either did not use blackets (slept in sweats) or when it was quite cold my DH and I each used our own blanket tucked in around us and the twins swaddled so there was no danger of them getting trapped under the covers.