Greetings from sunny south africa. My partner and i have 5 month old identical twin boys. They were born 5 weeks premature. We have had them on a EASY routine from the moment they left the hospital and have transitioned ok to a 4 hour EASY routine at present. They had a problem with reflux and some eating problems initially but are eating well now. We had a problem with pacifiers becoming props but have been doing PU/PD for 10 days now and the boys are sleeping much better now although it still takes 20 min to get them to fall asleep with a lot of crying and fussing.(It is difficult to ready their sleepy signals,so we work on winding them down after an hour and a half of activity, of course with 2 the problem now is they fall asleep eventually but on average one of them wakes up after 45 min and starts crying so we have to start all over again when he wakes his brother up). They are on 4 formula feeds of 200-225 ml each and one feed extra of expressed breast milk also +/-170 ml. They get 3 teaspoons of rice cereal with their evening meal at 5.30.
Their routine is as follows:
Wake up between 5 am and 5.30 eat at 6, nap at 7.30 only for about 45 min then awake till 9.30 eat, nap by 11 till 1. Eat at 2, nap around 3.30 till 4.30 maybe 5, eat at 5.30, bath at 6 in bed by 6.30, dream feed at 10.
They don't have a lovie and we have removed the pacifiers at bed time and only use them during the day if need be to calm them while they are awake playing. They sleep in different cots in the same room.
Our problem is two fold. In terms of night wakings by using PU/PD we have managed to cut them down from 2-3 times a night to just once around 1 am in the morning for 20 min. How can we eliminate this? Also they wake up at 5 am in the morning ideally we would like to push this until 6 am so that they are not so tired by the end of the day and they should also then have a better nap in the morning around 8 for longer. The problem is they wake up starving as their last dream feed was at 10 pm. We don't want to feed them at 5 so push it for as far as we can around 5.30. How do we shift their early morning wake up time later without starving them?
Then in terms of PU/PD we are still concerned that we are picking them up too soon or mistaking their mantra cries for real cries because it still takes around 20 min to get them to stop crying and fall asleep. Once asleep we keep patting and shushing for 5-7 min. The problem is on average Liam wakes up after 30 min and can't go back to sleep on his own we leave him to try but always come to pick him up if he can't and cries (of course with 2 if it is not the one that wakes it's the other one and when they cry chances are that they will wake up their brother as well) This pattern of falling asleep with PU/PD and then waking up after 30 min has developed during the past few days. Of course this plays havoc with nap times and bedtime as by the time they have finally fallen asleep for the second time it is already 7 or 7.30 pm at night. What can we do to better this?
Regards Nadia
