Sleeping through the night

I have six week old twin boys and am trying to figure out when they will be sleeping through the night, and if they will do it at the same time or individually. Right now, when one wakes up to BF, I wake the other. Is it possible I'm causing more work for myself and should just feed on demand at night to try and see if one is ready to sleep through? Hope this makes sense, because my brain is not fully fuctioning at this point.

 

my girls STTN (10 hours) at 6 months & 7 months. they slept 12 hours at 9 months. i personally woke my second baby to feed her with the first because i couldn't handle the thought of getting up more than i needed to at night. but i do know other mothers on here who fed on demand at night precisely for the reason you mentioned in your post. i think you need to consider your babies needs as well as your needs when making that decision - i don't think there's a right or wrong way to do it. just the way that works for your family. GL!

 

Our (almost) 4 month old girls have just started STTN (8 - 10 hours) with some regularity. When one wakes up I always wake up the other one, but that's because I'm doing the middle of the night feedings myself, and once or twice when I tried to let the other one sleep, she would always wake up while the first was nursing, and then it became a double cry fest (I swear they can smell the boob when it comes out!). A friend of mine (who has two sets of twins!) would nurse on demand throughout the night and not wake up the sleeping twin--she put a twin bed in the babies' room and just slept on that so she could get more sleep. I'm sure you'll figure out what works for you and your boys -- good luck!

 

For the first 3 months our twins slept in a co-sleeper right next to our bed. ALot of times I woke one when the other woke but once I felt like if I didnt wake the other and that one should happen to get up an hour, if I could still get up and meet that babies needs then I didnt need to wake them both. Hope that makes sense.

And FYI my DD learned to STTN around 6-7 months, my DS didnt learn until we night weaned at 13 months!!!! All babies are individuals. Trust your gut

 

Mine have just started to sleep 6-7 hour stretches as of last week. There is hope!!

 

5 months and still waiting.

 

We were sleeping through 8hrs feed then another 4 or 5hrs at nearly 3months then the last few weeks we have regressed!!!!!!! :-( We are now lucky to get to 6 hrs!!! Not sure if it's this "4month sleep regression" or a combination of jabs, teeething, illness, colds, tonsillitus and reflux messing everything up. We have got it all going on lol

Hope you find something that suits you soon and CONGRATULATIONS!! Enojy them xx

 

They didnt stop all night feeds until they were 9 months.

I would say for the first 3-4 months when one woke, I woke the other.

 

My twin girls slept through the night (12 hours, 8pm-8am) at 7 weeks old. I always woke to feed the other (if need be). They were never separated in feedings by more than 20 minutes. They are almost 4 months old now and have not regressed whatsoever. I have not been woken up once by them in 9 weeks! Woo hoo! They were born at 36 weeks weighing 5lb 12oz and 6lb 5oz, so I did have a little prematurity to deal with. But overall, I think a lot of it was sleep coaching and enforcing certain routines and pracitices from day one. They always responded very well to strict scheduling. I think that you can absoultely keep working toward your goal and expect a night of sleep sometime real soon! Please let me know if you'd like me to share all my 'secrets' lol, I don't want to assume and bumbard you with information. Good luck to you!

 

We have always woken the other up. We've also had a scheduled night feeding since they were born. It started at 2 am, then we moved earlier and earlier until it was like 11/11:30--and we were waking them up for it. Once they hit 6 months, we started reducing the size of the bottle from 8 oz to 7 to 6 to 5.

The night after their 6 month appointment, the doctor basically told us to stop waking them up. Will fussed for about 45 minutes, but other than that they both slpet the whole night.

So, no, you're not setting them up for bad sleep habits at all! You're saving your sanity!

 

Our boys STTN for the first time (I think it was 8 or 9 hrs) 2 or 3 weeks ago and have been doing it with increasing frequency since then, often 10-11 hrs (though they do sometimes wake up crying if they break out of their swaddles, but they go back to sleep after we re-swaddle them and give them a paci). I found the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child very helpful for sleep training. I started following some of the principles (e.g. put down at the first sign of drowsy cues, in the crib, in a dark, quiet room with some white noise, etc.) at 7 weeks and they became good nappers pretty quickly; nighttime sleep just took a little longer for them. (Part of that, we realized a few weeks ago, was due to reflux. So once we got sleep wedges and sleep positioners and started double-swaddling them--Miracle Blanket inside a SwaddleMe--so they didn't break out as often, they started sleeping much better.)

Oh and as for whether you should wake the other to feed, someone shared a principle with me that makes a ton of sense: If you notice that you consistently have to wake the same twin at night, stop waking him to see if he will sleep through. But if it varies as to who wakes up first for a nighttime feed (as was the case with our boys), they're not ready yet. Ours really started sleeping through right about the same time. They are fairly close in weight and we've tried to keep them on roughly the same schedule since they were born. (We feed them basically on demand, but if one woke up to eat and it had been at least 2.5 hrs since the last feeding, we'd go ahead and wake and feed the other, too--day or night. If he wasn't hungry we wouldn't coax him, but he almost always was.)

 

Our boys have been sttn for about a month now 8-9 hours a time

 

I started leaving my dd when for about 8-9 nights in a row, my ds would wake to eat and my dd would still be sound asleep. The first night I left her she slept 8.5 hrs. So for a few nights ds would get up after 5 hrs to eat, I would feed him, put him back down and then they'd both wake 2-3 hrs later to eat.

Now they are both sleeping between 5-8 hrs at night fairly consistently, and I've stopped waking the second baby if they are sleeping good.

I agree with if you feel like you can get up in an hour if the second baby wakes hungry, then let the second one sleep. But honestly unless you are having to consistently wake ONE specific child up each night, chances are they aren't going to sleep much longer than the first one does yet!

 

QUOTE(mom2identicaltwingirls @ May 11 2009, 07:53 AM) [snapback]1308398[/snapback]
My twin girls slept through the night (12 hours, 8pm-8am) at 7 weeks old. I always woke to feed the other (if need be). They were never separated in feedings by more than 20 minutes. They are almost 4 months old now and have not regressed whatsoever. I have not been woken up once by them in 9 weeks! Woo hoo! They were born at 36 weeks weighing 5lb 12oz and 6lb 5oz, so I did have a little prematurity to deal with. But overall, I think a lot of it was sleep coaching and enforcing certain routines and pracitices from day one. They always responded very well to strict scheduling. I think that you can absoultely keep working toward your goal and expect a night of sleep sometime real soon! Please let me know if you'd like me to share all my 'secrets' lol, I don't want to assume and bumbard you with information. Good luck to you!



Please share any secrets you have. They would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

I know this doesn't help, but mine still don't STTN. Every now and then they do, but it's not consistant and they don't STTN at the same time.

As far as waking the other to feed. I've never done that myself just because I wanted them to learn to wake when they're ready/hungry. Though if you're already doing it, I'd recomend to continue for the first couple months because they do need those ounces After about the 3rd month I don't see the point in waking them. There are some babies that will STTN at 3 months ^_^ Good luck!

 

Mine didn't sleep through the night until 8 months old, when I decided to just let them cry. They STTN for a few weeks, and then slowly started waking again, right now at 11 months old tomorrow they usually wake up once a night. However, if one is up I don't wake the other any more, but for the first 5-6 months I generally did wake them so I could feed both.

 

My girls stopped sleeping through the night at 4 months, almost to the day! Even still, one baby gets up twice in the night and the other still nurses every three hours throughout the night. It's exhausting and I'm wondering when it will end... My girls still sleep in our room in a cosleeper (I'm sure we're pushing the weight limit somehow!) and I'm starting to think about moving them to their own room, although my goal is to do this when they start sleeping longer stretches- ha!!!
For the first couple months i woke one if they other woke to eat, now i don't... but I'm also better at sleeping while I nurse in bed at this point.

 

My girls slept through the night by their adjusted age of about 8 weeks. That was about from 9 pm-around 6ish am. It was only about a couple weeks after that that they were sleeping from 8 pm-7/7:30 am. I know it's so frustrating when you are sleep deprived. I used to wake both of mine up too, if only one woke to eat. I'd rather have to get up once then drag my butt out of bed multiple times. Often I was up for a good hour to hour and a half that I had trouble getting back to sleep because I was too awake. Once they got closer to an age and weight when I knew they might be STTN, I would only feed the one that actually woke up. Hannah was smaller but needed the extra bottle so sometimes she got an extra feeding while Kate slept. Hope that helps! Hang in there...it does get better...promise.

 

Ok, you asked for the 'secrets'. LOL it's LONG, but here ya go:

Yes, I would love to share with you what I did! Now bear in mind that I am a first-timer and just kind of made this stuff up as I went along...no joke lol. There are a lot of books out there and I've been told that "my method" has striking similarity to many others, but it is my own. I did not read a book. Every kid is different, but this worked like a charm on mine.

For starters, I always made sure that they were well fed. A hungry baby will not sleep through the night. You can calculate how many ounces your LOs should be taking in a 24 hour period by multiplying their weight by 2-2.5. At 7 weeks my babies needed to be eating roughly 30 oz per 24 hours. I knew that if I did not want them waking at night, that I had to have them eat these 30 oz during the day (they were a little over 12 lbs). I document everythig that they eat, when they sleep, poop, ect. This was them on March 15, 2009 at 7.5 weeks old:

8:00am- woke up, ate 7 oz bottle

8:30-9:30am- played

9:30am-12noon napped

12noon- woke up, ate 6 oz bottle

12:30-1:00pm- played

1:00-3:00pm- napped

3:00pm- woke up, ate 5 oz bottle

3:30-4:30pm- played

4:30-6:00pm- napped

6:00pm- woke up, ate 3 oz bottle

7:30pm- bath time

7:45pm- ate 7 oz bottle

8:00pm- bed (they did not wake again until 8:00am the next day)

This schedule has been kept to today (although nap times and feeding amounts have slightly changed). Which brings me to my next point- consistency. I could tell real early on that they loved consistency because they felt secure knowing what to expect next. As you can see, I wake, feed, play, sleep- always in that order. You can also notice that there are three naps per day- morning, afternoon and late afternoon (they still nap like this). Lastly you will see that I did not allow small, frequent meals. They ate 3-4 hours apart and therefore the meals were larger and they were more satisfied.

The next thing I will explain to you are my "sleep rules". I decided upon many of these while I was still pregnant and tried very hard to always stick to them. Man did they work! They are as follows:

1. I never ever put them to bed or nap asleep, always graugy. They put themselves down the rest of the way.

2. They were never rocked to sleep, allowed to fall asleep while eating or use bikies to sleep. They have small, 12 inch, soft square blankies to use for comfort.

3. If and when they started fussing after being put down awake I would not pick them up. I would shhh them, rub their backs, repostion them, or re-hand them their blankies, but no picking up.

4. They have always slept in their own room, in their own crib. The room is kept slightly darkened and there is white noise kept on. They shared a crib until they were about 5 weeks old but after that they became so 'mobile' (hitting, army crawling) that they would find their way to one another and harass them lol! They were then separated to two cribs, but in the same room.

5. They were always napped and put to sleep in their cribs, which are in their room...nowhere else. If they fell asleep in their swings or bouncy seats, they were transported to their room. I even did this when they were 3/4 days old. I always wanted them to associate their room with sleep, no questions asked. A pack and play or bassinet in the livingroom would not suffice, they needed to be removed from all distraction to begin the learning process.

6. They were initially side slept (never back, although I know it's guidelines...mine would never go for it!) but became tummy sleepers by 6-7 weeks old.

7. We have a SOLID bedtime routine that we will not break. Bath, Bottle, Bed. It's at the same time every single night.

As a result of this sleep regemin, I can now lay my babies down at a scheduled nap or bedtime, completely awake and they will nuzzle their square blankies and put themselves to sleep. They also do not cry right away to get out of their cribs. They will lay there for quite sometime talking to their mobiles and bumper pads lol (there are animals on them). This is because I trained them to love being in their cribs- they feel safe and happy there. I never had to use any formal 'cry it out' method, because it was never really needed. I mean they cried when put down from time to time but never for more than 5 minutes here or there. I would comfort them like I explained up top, but never pick them up or put them back to sleep. That is their job.

Again, I am a first-timer, but this is what worked for me. I hope that you find some of this useful. Good luck and keep me informed!

 

Mine STTN 12 hours at 4.5 months. I think they would have started earlier but I was afraid to stop the dream feed! They used to go from 11.30pm-7am prior to this. DD did it from 6 weeks but DS started closer to 3 months. I FF and I was on a routine so I cant advise you on the BF on demand. GL though!

 

Mine are 5 1/2 months and still wake up 2-3 times a night. I decided not to wake the other one for the reason you say. Plus I find it easier to feed one at a time at night and get them back to bed. I want to cry when they wake at the same time. Hoping they'll STTN soon!!!

 

Emma slept through at 3 months, Jake at 6. I did CIO with Jake. I woke them both to eat at the same time until I thought Emma was ready to sleep through, which was basically when she wasn't taking as much when I woke her.