sleeping (or not sleeping)

So right now my husband and I sleep in shifts, because it's pretty much impossible to sleep with the babies in the room. Even when they're "asleep" they are only quiet for about an hour at a time, and the rest of the time they're grunting and groaning and squealing. I think it's pretty much because they're really gassy, so sometimes it's a really loud chorus of grunting followed by a whole lot of farting. The problem is that they're so noisy that it's hard to tell when they're just gassy versus when they're hungry without getting up and trying to give them a pacifier to see if they'll root around for it.

In any case right now we just have one of us sleep upstairs while the other takes care of a couple feedings with the babies downstairs. We "sleep" with them in our bedroom (in a pack n play bassinet) for maybe three hours in the middle of the night. Our pediatrician suggested maybe putting them to sleep in their nursery instead of in our bedroom, keeping the monitor volume low, and basically waiting until they were actually crying to get up to feed them. I'm kind of afraid to do that because we weren't planning on moving them to the nursery for a few months, but I don't know what to do. Should we just keep sleeping in shifts? I go back to work next month and I don't know how we're going to make it work then. Also, they tend to go from grunting straight to ear-splitting shrieks if they get hungry enough. (Occasionally, we get a scream due to their gas discomfort, and they grunt from gas for about 30 mins straight about 1 hour before feeding.)

Our girls are 11 weeks, 2 weeks adjusted. They still eat every 2-3 hours.

 

I would move them to the nursery, keep the monitor kind of low, and maybe get a white noise machine. Babies cry when they need something. I'd want to be able to ignore the little grunts and noises they can learn to work through on their own.

 

^this although they are still little so I can see your dilemma. Maybe try it a night or 2 and see how it goes?

 

I would move them as well. One of us slept in the same room with our kids for about a week, and basically whoever was in the room with them got NO sleep due to all the rustling around, etc. It was much better for ALL of us once they were in their own room and we were in our room and we adjusted the monitor volume low enough that we didn't hear the smaller sounds.

 

Thanks folks, I got the monitor unpacked and it is charging but won't be ready to use until tomorrow night. We'll see how it goes. My husband is a little worried about moving them out of our room, but the nursery is right next door so it's really only like 10 feet further away than they are right now. I'm suspecting with the doors open we'll still hear all the grunting directly without the monitor! Tonight I'll try putting on some white noise in our bedroom with them and see what happens during our one stretch of all trying to sleep (midnight - 3am, lol).

 

My plan was to keep the kids in our bedroom for a while but after 3 weeks of what you are describing we agreed to move them in their room and it was much better for all of us. In their room they had their own cribs so they weren't waking each other as easy and also, I wasn't up for every little grunt. I think while they were in my room, I was waking them up just because I was going to check up on them after every little noise.

ETA: At 18 months we separated them in different rooms and we regret not doing it sooner - they started to sleep much better afterwards.

 

Here goes, I'm going to feed them next at 11pm and then put them in their own room. :-O The monitor is set up, along with the soundspa for white noise. Now I just need to get over how I always feel like I need to check on them as soon as they *stop* making noise.

Related question, when did you start giving your babies a bedtime ritual? We're still pretty much in survival mode and have no real "bedtime" because they sleep pretty much like 20 hours a day, so all the time is bedtime. I guess if they sleep okay in the nursery and we can actually sleep, maybe we can start having a real schedule and both sleeping at night instead of shift sleeping, then introduce a bedtime ritual. I feel like they're still too little to understand "bedtime" or realize that we're doing any sort of ritual.

 

Good luck tonight with the new routine.

A routine doesn't have to be formal. With Annabelle I would lay her down and tell the same made-up rhyme every night. I didn't really do it any other time so after a while she began to associate it with bedtime. With the boys it was putting on jammies and a sleepsack then nursing and bed. The sleepsack, along with the sound machine were their routine.

 

We started a bedtime ritual around 8 weeks. Last bottles, bed, read a book, sing a song.

 

I just wanted to throw this out there, I had a baby monitor that only transmitted sound to our room if there was a prolonged noise being made (more than 1 second). So all of the little grunts and whines? They didn't transmit. I slept much better.

Another thing that we did which helped a LOT during the night wakening period, was to alternate nights. One person would handle all night wakings one night, the other the next night. That guaranteed that at least one person would get a pretty good night's sleep at least twice or three times a week. Of course, we didn't figure that out until they were past 3 months old.

 

Our nighttime ritual was pretty basic, but it seemed effective. We changed them (even if they could sleep in what they had on), did a bottle in a dimmed room, and then laid them down. I think consistency is key- they'll recognize the signs for bedtime soon!

We did keep the girls in our room for a long time, but Paul and I are good sleepers. We only woke up for cries after the first few months. Grunts just became part of our nighttime chorus. If you can't sleep through it, I'd move them.

And, for what it's worth, we never used monitors. Our layout sounds just like yours and we heard them fine from their room. If you'd feel better with a monitor, I like the kind Bex suggested. At this point, you're relearning to sleep with them as much as they're learning to sleep! It can be hard to get good sleep when you're worrying.

How'd it go last night?

 

OMG, that was SOOOOOOOOOO much better. Phew! Every time I woke up, it was either time for them to eat or almost time for them to eat, which meant I actually managed to get at least two consecutive hours of sleep in each interval. I don't know that the monitor is really necessary because whenever they got loud enough for it to wake me up, I could hear them from down the hall too since we left both doors open. I do think the monitor will be nice when they're older and sleeping more and we start putting them to bed before we go to bed, in which case we might be downstairs or further away than the bedroom.

We did a little bit of a nighttime ritual to get it started -- diaper, fed, swaddled, read a story, then turned on the soundspa with white noise and projection. We checked on them about 5 times in the first half hour for our own peace of mind, but after that they were fine. They grunted and groaned as usual, but it was quiet enough that we could sleep through it. They need baths today so I'm thinking about waiting until bedtime to wash them, since they sleep really well after their baths. Usually we bathe them midday because it's the only time we're both awake and it's a two-person job, but once I'm back at work it will need to be moved to the evening anyway.

That's an interesting idea about alternating nights. I don't think we could pull it off because I'm breastfeeding so I need to be up either to feed them or to pump every few hours, but we might do a modified shift schedule or something so that each of us gets to sleep through one feeding and get a 5 hour sleep chunk. In any case I am really excited at the prospect of us being able to both sleep at night for the larger chunk of the night, because I go back to work in three weeks and I'm going to need to be awake during the day, not sleeping until noon.

(The girls are fast asleep right now in their pack n play too, surprisingly -- they're usually fussy if they're in there. Maybe they're just getting to be better sleepers?)

 

Yay! They are getting to the age too when they just settle in. I think it was 5-6 weeks with us when they started actually going to sleep regularly at night and then waking up twice pretty regularly. That was a HUGE shift for us! I think yours are probably getting close to that adjusted, right?

 

They're three weeks adjusted today, but yeah, they seem to be getting into something of a pattern. Although I'm not sure if it's a new pattern or they're growth spurting again -- the past few days they often want to eat every 2 hours during the day, eating more than they used to, and then sleeping really well from like 6pm-10pm and then eating every 3 hours until morning, when it's back to 2 hours. I know at some point they're supposed to start eating a larger volume less frequently but I'm not sure when that is -- they'd been getting 3oz in their bottles and nursing ~10-12 mins, and the past couple days they're nursing 15-20 mins and taking 3 1/2 oz in their bottles for some feedings.

In any case though, we are sleeping much better with them in the nursery and have not even considered moving them back to our room. We should have moved them earlier!

 

It's the first of many times in parenthood you will make a change and wonder, why did we wait so long to do that!