Fraternal twins napping

Okay - my boys are almost 6 mos old. One of them will take 2 nice long naps - 1 hour to 2 hours per day and normally a quicky around 4. The other still is taking 4+ little cat naps like 20-45 minutes being good. I cannot get him to go longer, maybe 3 times he has taken an hour + nap. Is this truly his personality? Can I change him? How much is it asking for 2 different babies to go nap at the same time for approximately the same amount of time?
As it is right now, Baby B goes down first for his first cat nap, by the time I get baby A down, baby b is waking up.... about when Baby A ( the better napper) is waking up, Baby B is back down for nap #2!!!! :headbang:

Anyway I bought and read the twin version of Healthy sleep habits, and it talks about fraternal twins being harder to get to sleep and nap at the same time. Has this been your experience?

In Baby B's defense... he is the better sleeper at night! :clapping:

 

My boys are fraternal and they've always slept the same for naps. JT usually wakes up 15-20mins before Jack does but for the most part they sleep the same Have you tried CIO at the 45 minute mark? They are usually switching sleep patterns then and can disturb them. Being that he is ready to go down again so quickly is leaving me to believe that he does actually want to sleep longer but can't get past that point. We did CIO, I'm sure other people might have some other tips too!

 

My two were always put down for naps together & napped at the same time. I also did CIO together and if one woke before the 1 hour mark I tried to let them fuss for awhile to see if they would go back to sleep.

 

Same here. :good:

 

Same here. Their naps weren't in sync until they were sleeping all the way through the night though. Before that, my schedule was just like yours! :wacko:

 

I did the same here as well. Now that my twins are a little older, DD usually sleeps longer then DS but they have napped at the same time.

 

I would say he is having trouble transitioning to the next sleep cycle. my one son had a hard time getting past that point for awhile. I followed the no cry sleep solution and went in a few min before I knew he would wake up and settle him right back down before he got in that too awake mode and wouldn't go back to sleep. for him CIO wouldn't have worked to keep them on the same schedule because after he got that catnap he would be ready to play for a good two hours and if i left him to cry which I did he never cried and just played for 2 hours with nothing in his crib mind you and at the point he started to cry it was time for him to eat and at that point thought it wasn't fair to let him cry. after a couple of week of going back in there befoe I knew he would wake up he started taking an 1 1/2 hour nap instead of 45mins. Sometimes I even had to hold him in my arms to nap just so he would get in the habbit of taking a longer nap. I did whatever I could to get him to sleep that extra 45min to get him used to napping for an 1 1/2 hour. It sucked but I would spend the rest of the time my other son was conintuing his nap getting the other one to go back to sleep. if he didn't go back by the time the other one woke up I gave up. It took about 3 weeks but they are both napping two 1 1/2 hour naps. I agree though that it is much harder to get two frat twins on the same schedule.

 

Ok, since posting and thinking about all of this more.... I started thinking of all the things I'd like to go smoother around here. My DH and I decided that we should work on night time first and doing some sort of CIO to get night time wakings eliminated, and then hopefully naps will fall into place. I hope this works out for us like Becky suggests! I'm breastfeeding, and just hate the idea of the boys being hungry though. We still give a bottle of EBM at 10pm... normally they take about 5-6 oz. Is it unreasonable to think they could then make it until 6 am without eating again? Currently they are waking and getting patted, shushed, and pacifiers until they fall back to sleep... but at least once (sometimes the only time they wake up), there is this distinctive cry that usually means no amount of patting is going to get them to go back to sleep, and they are still each getting 1 feeding per night - sometimes it's 3 am sometimes it's 5:30! I stopped waking the other to eat when the first one woke a couple months ago...

I'm sorry, I'm rambling! I need help! Maybe I'll go order that book the No Cry sleep solution.... :FIFblush:

 

I put mine to sleep at the same time, even if one is not really ready to sleep. If one is ready and the other one is still going, I try and keep the one that is ready to sleep a little bit longer, like 15-30 minutes and then I put them to sleep at the same time and let them cry, if they want to. I just go in from time to time and pat them and they settle in maximum 15-20 min. They usually sleep for 1.5-2h, but from time to time one would wake up after 30-45min, so I go in before he starts to cry hard so he doesn't wake up his brother and I try to rock him back to sleep. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and I just take him downstairs to play. And I don't let his brother sleep longer than 15-30 min after one is up before 1 hour mark.

You should put them to sleep at the same time. At least you get some time to yourself while they cry and sleep to eat/rest or do things around the house.

 

Same here!

 

Are they eating solids yet? At 6months my boys were eating breakfast (cereal and fruit) and supper (veggie and fruit) and 4 bottles a day. They would eat around 6-7oz at 7pm and sleep until 7am so yes it is feasible to think that your babies could eat 5-6oz at 10p and sleep until 6a without being hungry. However it would depend too on how much solids they are getting. I felt like mine were eating enough during the day that they didn't need to eat at night it was more of a habit...although we never really dealt with that, my twins love sleep!

 

I thought my boys were fraternal at 6 months but they slept in pretty much the same schedule since birth. Jake always needed to sleep a bit longer though. We did the opposite as you suggested and worked on naps first then nighttime almost fell into place. We did CIO at 7 months. (Found out at 16 months they were ID, but I'm not sure that really matters.)

 

My girls are fraternal and their nap needs are so different that I have finally split them into separate rooms - we went two months just letting them try to sync up but I was getting terrible nap lengths. The kicker is they sleep in sync at night. Anyway, one does appear to need more sleep than the other. One has 2 longer naps, plus a catnap, the other has 4 shorter naps. Not convenient for me but they get the same amount of sleep. I have started doing the leave in crib for 1 hour from HSHHC so at least I know I am going to have 1 hour - sometimes longer...good luck.

 

I could have written your post word for word! Both of my twins sleep through the night but our baby B cat naps like crazy during the day. I really haven't tried working on it since they go to daycare during the week and I can't control their naps there. I don't have any advice to offer, but just wanted to say you aren't alone!