Same feeding and sleeping schedule?

Our little girls are one week old today. Nursing is going well as far as their growth and my supply.

Is it possible to get two fraternal twins on the same feed and sleep schedule?

Here are my questions:
How did you do it?
When did you start?
When did it work?

Also- they are in a bassinet by our bed. How do you co-sleep with two?

Thanks,
Rebecca

 

I don't have specific advice but I know it's possible. My girls were in the NICU for the first 3 weeks, when they came home they were both feeding every three hours. Their sleep was similar since they would wake, (cry), feed (burp) and go back to sleep every three hours. After a couple of months they moved to every 4 hours or so. I don't know how they got them to only feed every 3 hours but they were formula fed which also helped stretch the feeding time out.

 

The rule in our house was that if one was hungry, they both ate (so it was a sort of modified on demand feeding). As newborns, their sleep schedule is really determined by their eating schedule, so if you can feed them at the same time (tandem) or one right after the other, you'll probably find them sleeping at the same time as well, or close to.

My girls tended to naturally wake around the same time, almost every time, but on the odd time one would wake before the other, I would get her up & at the same time gently loosen the swaddle of my other girl & turn off the white noise in their bedroom. Usually within 10 - 15 minutes baby #2 had woken up & I'd get her & finish up nursing both of them tandem. Then I would re-swaddle them both, turn on the white noise & tuck them back into bed. There was usually a bit of a soothing to sleep dance that needed to happen that sometimes got really frustrating, but we got there eventually.

As they got older, the thing that I found key to maintaining them on the same schedule was making sure they woke at the same time in the morning & exposing them both to bright sunlight (in the summer) or turned on all the living room lights (in the winter).

 

This is exactly how I did it. If one woke then I also woke the other one. As they got older, during the night, I did experiment and feed one then let the other sleep, but I no sooner laid my head down on the pillow to drift off to sleep and the other would always wake up. So, I just continued to wake them both.

 

My rule as well was if you or your brother are hungry, you are both eating. Poor S ate a LOT when he didn't really want to, but he exacted his revenge later (forced O into giving up his am nap).

Once one woke up, I'd change his diaper and loosen the swaddle of the other & turn off the sound machine. Usually just turning off the sound machine was enough to wake the 2nd, but if he wasn't awake by the time the first baby was on, DH would change him, which would PO him and get him ready. This worked well for S, actually, as he was a lazy nurser so O would bring down the milk and he could snack & fall asleep rather quickly after eating.

Oh & I didn't know my 'fraternal' twins were identical until they were over 1 month old and we didn't deviate from this pattern for a full 6 months. Every time I tried to feed them individually it ended up like what Rachel (Utopia) described. You'd no sooner lay down and the other would wake up which would make me so angry! :lol:

 

Congratulations on your twins. When mine were that age there was no.such thing as a schedule! We tried getting one up of the other woke to.feed, but it seemed no matter what we tried, the woken twin would not be awake enough to eat and the would still be up an hour later.
For awhile there the twins rotated, when one was up, the other was sleeping, at least in the morning. It was nice having some 1:1 time with.them but I was not getting a chance at some downtime. Honestly I think their schedules changed on their own. They were on the same schedule fairly early. Good luck!

 

When mine were that age we were force feeding them every 2 hours around the clock.....they just wanted to sleep and were loosing weight....

 

At that age, we also woke the other when one was ready to eat. It was almost always my little boy who woke first, my little girl just wanted to sleep sleep sleep. It took a lot sometimes to wake her but it helped her to eat because she's the smaller twin.

After about six weeks my boy had become much heavier than my girl and it was clear they had different metabolisms. At that point I would only force same feedings during the day so I could get things done. However, we also taught them early on that light & noise = daytime, dark & quiet = sleep time... so no matter how off their schedules got during the night, they would always wake up at the same time in the morning to start their daytime feedings.

 

I have a very similar story. At night, if one woke that one got fed, then I woke the other up and fed. We always started the day and ended the day at the same time, and I let them feed on demand during the day. After a few weeks they were pretty much on the same schedule with the exception of one of them wanting to cluster feed more in the evenings some days.

Around 6-8 weeks, my DD started showing signs that she was ready to drop a night feed. At that point I continued to feed bedtime (7pm) and the next feed (10pm-became our dream feed) together and then didn't wake hee up any more when her brother woke. She slept from the 10p feeding until early am while her brother woke every 3 hours for many more months. I allowed it this way because DS was over 2 lbs smaller than DD at birth and took a long time before he was ready to go through the night without a feed.

 

We fed them at the same time. Even now they are on the same sleep and eat schedule. If one woke we woke the other to eat. Otherwise we were up all night with no break. We tried just feeding one then the other and we were exhausted! We had them on an every 3 hour schedule from the time they came home which did help as well. We got the schedule so down that we had them both up changed and fed within 30 minutes. As they got older we stopped changing them at night as to not disturb them (unless poopy of course), kept the lights off and did not talk to them. We wanted to make bedtime, bedtime and day time play time! It worked for us. I also recommend Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child for sleeping advice! We had them in a PNP in our room until about a month ago and now they are in separate cribs (DD moves way to much for her brothers comfort!)

 

congrats!.... after 10 weeks in the nicu i didn't want to make mine wait around for anything, so they were on their own schedules. they both tended to want to eat around the same time most of the time, and therefore sleep somewhat around the same time. but it was never set in stone.

best of luck, jl