needing some encouragement

hi there, this isn't really a question but i want to say my bit and be understood please!!! i have 6 month old identical girls, fully breastfed and just starting solids. They are the coolest chilled out babies (except at bedtime) and they are currently feeding 2-3 hourly round the clock. As they are not in synch overnight this means most nights i am waking hourly. I know this will pass, I know it's a combination of development, the fact it's summer here and nights are really hot and that they are probably needing more calories but I'm really feeling it! With my singletons I would've just had them beside me in the night for minimal sleep disturbance but that doesn't work for me with two. I do not question my decision to breastfeed them but it feels really hard right now!
The other thing i am not loving right now is bedtimes. They are nearly always fraught with lots of crying and i have to leave them to it so i can get the house stuff done and get my big kids off to bed. Every settling trick i have is time consuming or one baby at a time-ish so i race around doing all the cleaning and tidying, visiting sad babies every 10 minutes and when I have the house in order I get whoever's still awake and we lie down together. It's my worst time of day!!!
Can anyone relate??
I will add that I have a 5 year old and an 8 year old, both very helpful but still kids who need my time too, my husband is great but he leaves for work at 7:30am and gets home about 7:30pm or later and currently has his leg in a cast so I feel I am juggling a lot right now.

 

Aww!!! Two babies at once is really hard. :hug: do you guys tandem at all? What about a dream feed to top them off right before you go to bed?

I empathize with the starting of solids. With all 3 kids it felt like just another chore in my already busy day, until they got the hang of it.

 

:hug: 6 months is a tough time all around (in my experience). With my twins, we did a modified on-demand nursing schedule. The rule was that if one woke to eat, they both ate. Have you tried that to see if it'll synch their schedules a bit more?

As for bedtime, would it work better in the overall routine to put the babies down really early? Then they could be down & settled before you focus on the older kids' bedtime?

And maybe once your hubby's leg is healed, he could take care of the evening tidying after he gets home from work. Yes, it makes for a long day, but you have a long day too, you know?

 

I can't tandem feed them, I'm a small person and they are awkward to lift, every time I try I hurt myself!! During the day I just feed one and then the other, we're in a good rhythm. At night usually they wake up about 20 minutes apart which works well timing wise, when they don't it doesn't occur to me to wake the other... usually I feed them lying down on the spare bed in their room so I fall asleep, I get woken up when the next baby starts asking for her feed! I can try keeping myself awake through the night feeds, it could make a difference...
I am going to need to assess when I do everything to make time for solid feeds so I can certainly try shifting their bedtime. Currently when I have tried putting them down earlier they just have a very small nap and wake up again, over and over again.... sigh...
I used to give them dream feeds, now they wake up at about 11 anyway!
I know these 'phases' are actually very short in the life of a child so I just try to go with it and catch what sleep I can it's just so very intense with two at once! I am also aware that in the blink of an eye we will be on to the next phase... eating proper people food will eventually make a difference, teething.. the exertions of crawling and then walking... they all have their effects on sleep and feeding requirements. But it certainly helps to know that these things are fairly universal. Most twin mums I know locally are not breastfeeding so the demands just don't seem to be the same through the night, or at least they aren't admitting it!!!

 

Hugs! This is a hard age. Honestly, I didn't have my twins on regular solid feeds until they were closer to 7 or 8 months. I would do them occasionally, but if the day was busy or they were cranky that was the first thing to go. As for the bedtime, I would try to move it up by 15 minutes every day until you reach the time that seems to work. Too early, and they view it as a nap, too late and they cry cry cry. I found that "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" by Marc Weissbluth really helped as far as developing a sleep routine that worked for my twins. Can you give the 2 older children some small tasks to do while you are focusing on getting the babies soothed and in bed so that there is less tidying for you to do once everyone is asleep?

I never tandemed at night because I found that I was bound to wake one after they had just nursed to sleep if I did, but at bedtime I did tandem to get them down quicker. Can you sit on your bed with them laying close so that lifting isn't as difficult? Do you have a twin nursing pillow? I had one that would support their entire bodies and I still tandemed when they were 19 months old! Can you get your 8 year old to help you get the 2nd baby lifted after the first baby is latched? Might seem weird at first to get her involved but goes a long way to normalizing breastfeeding if we expose our children to it like it's no big deal.

Hang in there. It does get easier. I would think that you should be seeing them drop one of those night feeds in the near future. Fingers crossed for that!

 

I can relate! My babes were up like that at six months and now that they have colds are back at it! It is So. Very. Tiring. My heart goes out to you.

My fellas were also not good at going to sleep on their own at that age and in hindsight I wish I had shifted their daytime sleeps to help them go to bed better at night. How many sleeps do yours have in the day? Perhaps they can drop or shorten their last sleep so they are tired and more ready for nighttime? A longer, but not too long, awake time between their last nap and bedtime might help. One of my guys woke 30-40 mins into his nighttime sleep for a while too. We would go to him and do our nighttime settling routine. It took a while but eventually he got the message that it wasn't a nap. Hard with your older kiddos, I know. Hope you are on to a new phase soon.

 

Thanks guys!!! Of course tonight was blissful, one went down fully awake and happy and 'sang' herself off to sleep, the other one crashed out during her last feed, woke up an hour or so later, wanted another feed but then also went down fully awake, relaxed, happy.... no crying at all from either little one! I should complain publicly more often!!