6 month old night wakings - trying shush pat

[nippo]

Hi there, my 6 month old twin girl (4.5 months corrected age) goes to bed with a little fuss for most naps and even at bedtime. She has always woken at night 2 or 3 times crying for 2 hours or more whilst I try and shh pat her. She used to sleep on me at night so when she wakes at 2 or 3 in the morning she wants me to pick her up. In the past we did a night of controlled crying and I hated it. It broke my heart and I wish I'd never tried it. However my little twin did sleep better and stayed asleep until 5am which she had never done before. I was grateful for a night of sleep.

We always used to feed her at around 3-5 am but she rarely drank more than 60mls so I know this is more of a habitual thing rather than hunger....

Now she is getting up at 2am and 4 am crying whilst I shush pat. I have baby whisperer so started to shush pat when she woke at night. The problem is she gets really angry and frustrated because I am not doing what is normal for her. It's like my presence is ramping up her crying and she can really keep it up for 2 hours or more. Last night she banged her legs on the bed and arched her body in frustration. I held back when she did to let her express her emotIons. She did that quite a few times and I think she just couldn't understand why I was shh patting her and not picking her up and sleeping with her.

Do I carry on? I feel so awful she cried for around 3 hours last night. And I am wondering if shh pat is the wrong thing if she gets upset when I do it. Help??!!!

[Layla]

Hi there and welcome to the forum,

I know you mentioned she was only drinking a small amount at night, but I do wonder if she's hungry and therefore unable to settle? When you were giving her a feed, would she drink and go back to sleep?

Could you also post what her routine looks like, including the feeds?

How long has it been since you've stopped holding her to sleep?

[nippo]

We are following the EASY 4 hour routine. I have only really started a proper eat, activity, sleep routine over the last week.

Big twin drinks really well and takes anything from 230-180 (230 being first feed). Little twin drinks a lot less, she is a skinny little thing and her drinking is a bit erratic. Mornings 210mls and after that anything from 90-180 per feed. Once she is full she won't take any more. I am weaning them at the moment and was hoping food might help but little twin is clamping mouth shut!

Before when we fed them at night, little one would sleep on the bottle and take 60mls, maybe 90mls...then go to sleep.she would sometimes wake an hour after feeding but not always...

I stopped holding her 5 days ago (4 nights)

Today I am breaking a bit from the routine and squashing an extra bottle in for her to see whether that makes a difference at night...

[nippo]

Hi Layla, i wrote everything down today, I have started easy in the last week or so so it's still difficult syncing up both girls. Particularly as little twin is crying for up to 2 hours at a time whilst at night doing shush pat.

Wake 6.45
E: 7am - 210mls
A: 55 mins (tired from crying during shush pat )
S: 7.57am down and asleep by 8.09 for 2.5 hrs
A: 10.30am
E: 11am 180mls
A:
S: 11:50am
A: 12:41pm
E: 1pm -120mls
A:
S: 14:30 walk in pushchair 45 min nap.
A:
E: 16.00 180mls
Failed nap attempt at 4.30pm
6pm bedtime routine
7pm asleep

I realise this looks nothing like the BW routines but it's quite hard with 2 babies.they don't sleep at the same time and little twin sometimes does short naps or they want milk earlier etc..

[Layla]

(((hugs)))

I wonder if they need more A as it seems like they are awake for a short time, sometimes having short naps (expect for the morning one) and they may even need less daytime sleep/getting rid of the catnap.

You could try stretching by adding 15mins every 3 days or so until you have something like this:

7am - wake
10-11.30am - morning nap (I would probably limit this nap to 1.5hrs so that there is more drive to sleep longer in the afternoon)
2.30-4 - afternoon nap - (again, limit it to 1.5hrs)
7pm - bedtime

While you are working on stretching their A's, you would probably still need the 3rd nap/catnap, but if the 3rd nap fails, I would do a super early bedtime so that they are not awake for 4 hrs before bedtime, which would cause overtiredness and restless sleep at night.

I don't have twins but I would imagine a staggered approach would work best so do one twin first and the other to follow 10-15mins later?

What do you think?

[nippo]

Thanks so much Layla,

I would love to have more activity time. I feel like I never see them!

This looks like a good plan, my only worry is that if I put them to bed earlier they may wake at 4-5 am and be wide awake.

I'll give you a recap of last night:

Bed at 715am. Little twin woke at 5.20am with a mantra cry. It was my husband's turn so he shush patted her for 20mins and she went back to sleep. ( I would normally leave her and start shush patted when real crying starts? Is thus right?)

She then woke again at 6am and instead of getting her up my husband decided to shush pat again. She had a mantra cry at the start then 30 mins later it turns into a real cry. My husband then realised it was 6.45 and picked her up! I was a bit upset with him because he got the whole night completely wrong but he said he wasn't sure whether to shush pat through her mantra cry...I am now worried that we have sent out the wrong message as we didn't see it through to the end....

Overall the night was better. I am going to print off yr schedule and give it a go today. I was basically looking for any sleep cues and putting them to bed as I was worried that I might miss their window. Will try today and tonight and Let you know how it goes. I will try and keep their 7pm bedtime otherwise big twin will start waking before 6am which is her wake up time now....

[nippo]

Oh I forgot two questions, I've only just managed to get them onto a 4 hour routine...they generally wake at 6am (little twin is still a work in progress) now which is great.

In the routine above, it would mean a 10am feed (4 hours from 6am wake).  Which is in the middle of suggested nap time. Just realised that now whilst putting them down! How do I get around this? The reason I want to keep the feeds to 4 hours is they take more milk in one go and I can then feed solids an hour later...

The other thing is they haven't mastered the art of napping so big twin does 45 minute naps a lot. I am trying to extend naps which is working some times but If, for instance I put them down at 9 and they wake at 9.45 I then feed at 11 and shorten A time so they don't have a huge wait until their next nap? Sorry still trying to work things out, they never do what I want lol!

[Layla]

I used to treat anything before 6am as a night feed and at 6 months we still sometimes had a night feed and I would then do a top up feed (which wouldn't be much) when she woke for the day and start counting from there.

If the baby wakes up and mantra cries, you would generally let them be until they really need you but even if your DH did what he did (bless him, it's great that he's trying!!!), don't worry about that ruining things for you.

So in the case of one twin waking up at 6am, you would probably shift everything to an hour less at this stage and then we can look at maybe shifting the day forward once the night wakings are better.

[nippo]

Layla!!!! We had a full nights sleep!!

I haven't quite managed to implement your routine yet but I tried to eek everything out by 5 minutes as it was all little twin could manage. She was falling asleep on the floor and I felt so bad...

Big twin went a bit bonkers so she may have been overtired but hopefully I can keep it up for a few days and they can move on a bit longer.

Recap of last night: I tried tanking up little twin so gave her a bottle at 5pm then her last bottle at 7pm bedtime. She slept right through!

BUT now big twin wakes up. She was up at 2am and put herself back to sleep after 45mins of playing. The woke again at 5.17am and I wasn't sure if she was awake or falling in and out of sleep. Eventually we both got up at 6am when she did a little yelp.

I am not sure why she is awake so early. She did about 10 hours lat night which is a good sleep. I can't get her to bed later as she is too tired by then. And I like that both twins go to bed at the same time...

[nippo]

Update:

Last night little twin went to sleep at 7 and woke at 4.47am. She didn't cry, just played for about 20 mins then tried to go back to sleep with long periods of silence. Then she started to get frustrated because she couldn't sleep and started fussing. It wasn't an 'I need you' cry, more like an irritated/frustrated cry which I tried to let her work out on her own. It turned into a mantra and frustrated cry. But it was now 35 mins so I got up and started to shush pat which actually was only one pat and then just leaving my hands on her back and she went to sleep in 30 secs. I don't know if this was so quick because of how hired she was. Should I have intervened sooner? I'm a bit unsure....

[Layla]

Sounds like a great night! I would have probably done a prompt feed and then back to bed... but the fact that you were able to resettle is great! I think its good to leave them to it when they wake if they are not crying.

With regards to the big twin waking early, that may be from many things.... routine could be one of them (if she's taking the 3rd nap and having too much daytime sleep) or it could be that she needed a feed. Again, if it were me, I would have fed and back to bed and done a top up feed upon waking. You might not be able to get them to do the exact same thing (like sleeping through the night at the same time) since they are all different 

How are you going with naps and daytime routine?

[nippo]

Well today they woke at 8. I didn't wake them at 7 even though we normally have a 7am start simply because I knew little twin had been up for 40 mins and big twin cried after waking up half an hour after being put down...

Both are on 4 hourly feeds (@8, 12, 4 and 7.30) and they drink 240mls for morning feeds then 210 thereafter. They have a few spoons of solids an hour after their feeds. Big twin eats a lot and little twin eats very little (well nothing really, most of it is spat out!)

Nap today was at 10am (BT 1.10 hrs and LT 1.50 hours) then 2pm but (BT 1.30hrs LT 25 mins then 30 mins) we put little twin back down for 30 mins at 4pm as she woke after only a 25min main nap at 2pm as she'd dirtied her nappy.

We had to pop out at 5pm and unfortunately they had a 15 non nap in the car. But they went to bed at 7.30pm and were quite tired.

[nippo]

Ok, last night went badly.

LT went down at 7 was up at 8, 8.30 (30 mins of shush pat), 9 then put self to sleep, then moaned quite regularly (but went back to sleep) then up at 3, 4, 5 and finally up at 6....she settled quickly after is shush patted (no longer than 5 minutes) but I don't want to be a prop. Most of the time, I think she was uncomfortable. When I put her on her side to shush pat she went back to sleep.

We kept to the same routine...is this a regression? I don't get it...I feel a bit like we are going backwards.

Also for 3 days they were up at 7am which I thought was great because it gave them a good night's sleep. But their wake up time can be 6, 7 or 8. Do I just plump for 6 to get a routine?

[nippo]

And now only do in 30 min naps today....feeling very, very discouraged...

[Layla]

How are you going hun? Its normal for these nasty 30min nap to pop up when your stretching As until they get more used to it. How did they sleep at night?