Tired and cranky twin girls

[burrisfam1]

I'm in need of some help.  My twin girls are 4mn, 3 weeks old but adjusted age would be 3 1/2 months.  We left the hospital 2 weeks after birth on a 4 hour feeding schedule.  We were 'kind of' doing EASY but little by little started rocking them to sleep and create monsters.  So we are in week 2 of doing EASY for real this time!  Our days look like this:
E 7a
A
S9-11
E11
A
S 1-3
E 3
A
S 4:30-5:30
A
E 7
BT 7:30
DF 11
The problem......we are FIGHTING to keep them awake!  Before morning nap is now fine but they get sleepy around 12:30 and then between 3-4:30 is excruciating.  They fall asleep sitting up in our arms or in the bouncy or on the playmat, we are practically doing cartwheels trying to entertain them and keep them awake.  Then after the catnap they wake @45min to 1 hr and are CRANKY until 7 when we feed and put them to bed.  So the afternoon evenings are not fun.

We just stopped the night feed we were doing around 3am and upped the amount we are feeding them during the day (which they aren't consistently finishing).  We started slow and just cut back what we were feeding them but they still wouldn't finish the feed at 7am until 2 days ago when we stopped night feeds all together.  But they are still waking around 3 and we go in and shush pat (for anywhere from 1-2.5 hours).

Should we have them sleep longer at the 4:30 nap?  Then push bed time?  Where is the line between keeping to the routine and following babies cues?  Plus there are two of them so we are trying to make it work with them both.

Any and all advice is greatly appreciated!

Blessings,
April

[Ima shel Alon]

Hi April!

When looking at their A times we always look at their adjusted age. 2h would be age appropriate for them, but could also be a touch too much. Have you tried putting them down after 1:45h A time? Would they do a full restorative nap (1.5-2h)?
If you do 1:45h A time and they only nap for 45min-1:20h long naps then the 2h A time is probably right for them. When DS was younger, till he was 1yo, the last 30min of his A time was hard. I had to basically carry him around to keep him awake and whenever I thought I knew he is tired enough but it wasn't his usual time I'd get UT naps, so what you are experiencing can be a natural thing that many babies do.

I really think that at this age NF are still important. Very few babies stop NF at this age and usually they do it by themselves (not parents weaning). If it takes you so long to settle them back to sleep than it sounds like hunger to me and my advice would be to feed them and to wean again when they older.
HTH