Responding to crying at night/naps

I know they are way too young for Crying It Out, but wondering how long I should wait to respond to them when they are crying during a nap or at night? 2 / 3 minutes????

 

I'm not sure how old your twins are. I normally didn't purposely take a long time to get to them, but if I was tending to the other one or getting a bottle ready then it might take some time before I was able to get to the crying baby.

 

I go potty and if they stop by the time I get out, I go back to bed. Mine are now at the stage where they fuss (lots of eh eh eh) before they full our cry. Often, they will eh eh eh for a min and go back to sleep. If yours are full out crying, i would go to them because they need you and probably wait no more than it take for you to go to the bathroom and get to them.

 

When my boys were this small, I never waited very long to respond to them. A couple minutes tops and that was only if I was in the middle of something (like showering, having cleaning stuff on my hands and needing to wash first, moving clothes into the dryer etc.) during their naps. At night I would try to get them as soon as I heard them crying. At that age my boys only cried if they were wet, hungry or needed to cuddle. Even though they didn't sleep in our bed all the time, there were many nights when they would fuss that I would lay with them in our bed until they or I fell back to sleep and usually that meant we all stayed there until the next feeding. It wasn't until they were about 3 or 4 months old that I would let them cry for a little longer and they were about 9 months old before we really did CIO with them.

 

I agree with the PP that once they start crying, you should attend to them as quickly as reasonable. However, at that age they make lots of noises even while sleeping that aren't really crying in distress. You'll learn which sounds mean what.

 

I got up as soon as I heard fussing, so that I could get bottles ready/pacis reinserted before they started to really cry.

 

At that age, as soon as they started fussing & making noise, I got up. I knew they were probably going to want to eat & were not going to go back to sleep until they had a bottlle anyway.

 

Ditto! Mine made the preemie goat grunts FOREVER!!!!!

 

Exactly what pp have said - I can usually tell by their noises if they're about to wake up or not. Crying for food/comfort bothers me so I rarely let it get to that. When in doubt I'll get up, stand by their cribs, and watch them.

 

Me too.