Author Topic: 8.5 month twins, night waking and early morning waking,  (Read 26689 times)

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Offline 4isstillnighttime

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Re: 8.5 month twins, night waking and early morning waking,
« Reply #60 on: April 21, 2014, 08:44:59 am »
Sorry to be so needy, but they are really struggling with the aftermath of this bug and 2 teeth at once! Currently really struggling with A times, they are rubbing eyes after 2 hours and we are just about managing 3 (were going up to nearly 4 before all this). Waking at least every hour between 12 and 4, then every 20 mins til 6 when I got them up. And every nap and bedtime is a screamfest, am having to shh pat through 10 mins screaming until they go to sleep when we had got to me sitting by the door using my sleepy words. And so am having to shh pat all night because they are like junkies and anything I do becomes a prop. They are also falling asleep over their feeds and if they are in the car or buggy for more than 10 mins even if they've only just woken up! I think they are overtired, where do I go from here??

It was all going so well.....please help me!!

Offline 4isstillnighttime

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Re: 8.5 month twins, night waking and early morning waking,
« Reply #61 on: April 21, 2014, 08:47:41 am »
PS though, thanks to you ladies, when my mum told me (AGAIN!!!) to let them CIO I replied "I have decided that I will never do that as it is not in the best interests of my babies long-term and there are other ways". Stumped her completely and she hasn't mentioned it again. So thank you for giving me the confidence to say that!!

Offline Sarah - Enfys' Mum

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Re: 8.5 month twins, night waking and early morning waking,
« Reply #62 on: April 21, 2014, 09:51:44 am »
Are they better now and stopped teething?





Offline 4isstillnighttime

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Re: 8.5 month twins, night waking and early morning waking,
« Reply #63 on: April 21, 2014, 12:04:24 pm »
The teeth are through the gum and they have stopped vomiting but they are miserable! Not sure if still ill or just really over tired. What do I do??

Offline Uglybethy

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Re: 8.5 month twins, night waking and early morning waking,
« Reply #64 on: April 21, 2014, 12:48:43 pm »
If you can I would spend at least three or four days at home or very close to home with them to get napping back on track. Once naps are on track nights will follow and early waking can be tweaked. So don't give them the opportunity to fall asleep in the stroller or car. If you need to nip out do it as soon as they've been fed after waking and get back at least 45 mins before nap time (just to avoid them falling asleep too early followed by an unsuccessful transfer from car to crib).

Offline 4isstillnighttime

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Re: 8.5 month twins, night waking and early morning waking,
« Reply #65 on: April 21, 2014, 12:56:48 pm »
Thanks, I will! But what about all this screaming? It's like they hate their cots all of a sudden - I put them down after 3 hours A and they still screamed for 10 mins before going to sleep. Is it because I tried to persevere with my schedule too much when they were ill so they've got into the habit of this overtired screaming? H in particular was rubbing her eyes and yawning after she had been up half an hour this morning, and yawning is a v late sign in mine!! But how can I deal with the overtiredness if they won't sleep longer than an hour and a half (if I'm lucky!) and barely sleep at night??

Feel like I want to cry!!

Offline Uglybethy

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Re: 8.5 month twins, night waking and early morning waking,
« Reply #66 on: April 21, 2014, 13:20:42 pm »
I can see your mind working overtime right now trying to figure it out... 'What have I done wrong?' 'why all this screaming?' 'Did I push them too hard?' 'Have I done unreparable damage?'. And I feel your pain, frustration and confusion. I've been there.
Tune into that because it is likely that this connection you have with the bubs gives you direct insight into how they are feeling.... Frustrated, tired, in pain, confused, and like life is free falling, spinning out of control (my interpretation of how things might be for them but you will know better).
All you can do is understand that and be there with them, whilst providing them appropriate opportunities for sleep or rest, eating and playing. (Which if you take a minute out to recognize what you are achieving, you are likely to see that you are already doing this).
You had an amazing bw plan that you are trying to head back towards and you'll get there and so will they. Unless you think things have changed so much that the plan needs tweaking. Let us know if you need help with this. Let us know if it would be helpful to see our easy routine from when my girls were 8.5 months old.
Sending you confidence and strength! Hang in there..

Offline 4isstillnighttime

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Re: 8.5 month twins, night waking and early morning waking,
« Reply #67 on: April 21, 2014, 13:25:57 pm »
That's just made me cry. It's exactly how I'm feeling!! Thank you!

I'd love to see your EASY if you have a minute

Xxx

Offline Uglybethy

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Re: 8.5 month twins, night waking and early morning waking,
« Reply #68 on: April 21, 2014, 14:08:28 pm »
I wish I was there to hug you right now... But you don't even have time for a hug do you?!
This is how I remember our easy looking at 8-9 months and I'll also mention the choppy bits that needed tweaking and how we tweaked them as I go along. Oh and btw I'm on my phone right now so please excuse typos.

E 6/6.30 wake up and feed (formula) if they woke earlier I obviously resettled them but I ignored it from the routine perspective.
A change diapers, play
07.30 breakfast
Walk doggies, more playing (please note when I say play or playing I mean babies doing their own thing and me running around like a looney clearing up or folding washing or whatever! And if one or both were fussy id just wear them in slings whilst I did my jobs)
S 9/9.30- 1030/11.00 sleep
E on wAking (bottle
A go out and do errands and give lunch
S 13.30/14.00-15.00/15.30 sleep
E on waking (bottle)
A playground then dinner then bath
17.30/18.00 bottle and book (if overtired it would be difficult to get a good bottle feed in here so we often did another top up right before bed)
18.30/19.00 bed

This is what I learned and therefore tweaked during this time:
Just accept a total day time sleep of 3 hours.. However that looks I.e might be two hours one morning and an hour the afternoon or the other way around another day.
They started to take very small feeds after both naps so I cut the 11 am feed and offered a snack instead and then gave a milk feed before the next nap. And then cut the milk feed after the second nap.
Eventually because of the variability that accompanied nap times with two babies I made a decision to bring the first nap slightly earlier and cap it at 45 mins and extend the second nap to two hours (which they managed really well straight after a milk feed).

So our easy changes to this...
E 6.30
A play breakfast 7.30
S 8.30-9.15
E snack on waking
A play and lunch 11.00
E milk feed 12.15
S 12.30-14.30 my girls need four hours awake time before bed)
A play dinner (16.30) bath (17.30)
E milk feed 18.30
18.30/19.00 bed

I can't seem to read this back so I'm hoping makes sense. Will check in again later.
Once again, sending strength
Xxxx




Offline babybarr

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Re: 8.5 month twins, night waking and early morning waking,
« Reply #69 on: April 23, 2014, 08:16:34 am »
FWIW mine including the first would only cry at being put down too soon. Perhaps they need 15mins more a time?
LAURA xx




Offline babybarr

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Re: 8.5 month twins, night waking and early morning waking,
« Reply #70 on: April 24, 2014, 07:30:40 am »
How are you doing?
LAURA xx




Offline 4isstillnighttime

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Re: 8.5 month twins, night waking and early morning waking,
« Reply #71 on: April 24, 2014, 12:37:00 pm »
Between bad and horrific. C was up every 45 mins last night except between 2:30 and 4:30, and Z was up then. C has another tooth coming and has such bad separation anxiety I have had to start taking her to the toilet with me or she screams the place down. I think I will start giving her a dummy at bedtime again - this morning after breakfast she picked up her sister's, put it in her mouth and fell asleep on the rug! She had been up since 4:30 but I still thought maybe she was trying to tell me something! It's worth a try!!

How are you?

Offline nippo

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Re: 8.5 month twins, night waking and early morning waking,
« Reply #72 on: April 24, 2014, 19:51:43 pm »
Hi Lilyrose22,

I've just logged on after a month of not checking the forum. I have twin girls who also suffered from reflux and slept no more than an hour every night and needed resettling. It was extreme to say the least, and I only had 2 hours sleep a night for the first 6 months.

I still remember locking myself in the bathroom and never wanting to come out because I would at least have some peace - and fall asleep!

I decided to use the shush pat technique on mine and I did have quite a long thread on here giving, almost daily updates on my progress. I'll post the link in a moment.

I will say it took us about 6-8 weeks to get our little ones to go to sleep for the entire night and there were nights where I just couldn't see that any difference had been made but with the support of the ladies here I carried on and now they do sleep from 7pm until 6am.

It takes a lot of hard work and you have to really steel yourself to not get emotional about the crying but it really dies get better.

What worked for me was separating them. I split them and my husband I shush patted them separately - each one taking the worst sleeper for 3 nights at a time.

We then brought them back together and did a bit more shush pat until they got used to each other again.

We bottle fed, and we knew our babies definitely relied on those feeds so much that they were only taking 90mls at each feed during the day. At 6 months they were still on tiny bottles. We decided to cut a feed at a time. And we found that overnight they took 180 during the day because they knew the night feeds weren't happening any more and we suddenly found yourself on big bottles.

Each wake took around 3 hours to resettle with little twin. But what we started to do was stop the patting and start just resting our hand on them instead. When we mastered this, we then went on to just shushing and removing our hand before they actually fell asleep. So just at the point of them going silent.

It felt like a battle of wills to me. Our little girl is VERY stubborn and it really was challenging because she tested us every night. I think 4 weeks in the crying reducing to 2 wakes a night (with around an hour and a half of settling) but that got less and less and really once she bought into shush pat the whole process got a lot quicker for us.

You just have to believe that it will end. You just can't see it yet! But somewhere they are learning this new way of sleeping.


I hope this helps a bit!!! I don't know if it does at all.

Xxx



 
Mummy to two gorgeous twin girls


Offline nippo

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Mummy to two gorgeous twin girls


Offline 4isstillnighttime

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Re: 8.5 month twins, night waking and early morning waking,
« Reply #74 on: April 27, 2014, 08:03:31 am »
Thank you all for your help. We have been away, and the girls have colds, so everything is up in the air again. And I've given C back her dummy - for better or for worse, but I couldn't stand all the screaming at bedtime and nap times - it was making feel so awful and like such a bad mum! And I have to go back to work really soon and I'm hoping the dummy will make it easier at the child minders. And we are all so unhappy such a lot of the time it feels like a small thing to try and make life a little bit less traumatic.

UB that EASY looks good. The only thing is I get so anxious about naps that I feel much better if the first one is a long one as I then feel like it doesn't matter so much about the second one and I can try to enjoy the day a bit. But I've had to put them down early this morning so maybe we will try it today!

Nippo - I've read your thread and it's really helpful. I don't have much support at night as my husband works nights a lot so I don't think I can separate them like you did, but it's v encouraging to see it working out. My little C settles really well with shh pat but then it became a prop too. I think maybe she just needs a prop and now she can re plug herself (at least in the daytime!!) the dummy might be the way forward. I do feel like such a failure though. Just not parenting v well at the moment I don't think! And of course I have the usual CIO chorus from everyone around me so I also feel very alone! You guys are saving my sanity!