Help needed with twins - things getting worse pg 22

[babybarr]

J woke around 10.25 and I woke h at 10.45 so j had 40 mins and h had 55mins

Still aim for 1pm?

[babybarr]

Kooky what does your easy look like atm

[babybarr]

Ok so J did 40min am nap and a 2hr 45min a time - slept 40mins woke and I managed to resettled.
H did 1hr am nap 2hr 30min a and woke 40mins and then only dozed

So thoughts for tomorrow?

ETA so J did about 1hr 30mins and H 40mins plus 30mins on / off

[*Ali*]

What time do you need them up for the school run? I was going to suggest 1.15/20pm to put them down for the second nap.

[babybarr]

J went down at 1.10 from a 10.25 wake up from a 40min nap slept 1.5hrs but with resetting half way

H went down 1.20 from a 10.45 wake from an hr nap slept 40mins and wouldn't really resettle.

School run less of an issue at mo as people doing it for me most of the wk.

[KookyK]

My EASY is (on a good day)

A 5-5.30
S in carseat on school run 8.30-9.15
S 12.30-2
Bed 6.30

Today it was
A 6
S 9.05-10.15 (if he sleeps long I do let him as its weekend ill do lon short)
S 1.30-2 (v short disappointing but am going to ride out to bed)
Bed will aim for 6.30 any earlier and it seems the EW is made worse)

[babybarr]

These boys need to start sleeping.  I'm at the end of my tether.  I don't know what to do with them.

J was asleep about 6.40pm
woke 11.15pm
1.15am (tried to settle him with no luck so fed him at 1.40am)
woke 4.55am - resettled till 5.50am

H asleep 6.20pm (due to lack of pm nap)
woke 2.45am fed
woke 5.30am but was wet through.

Is it me? I think I must be doing something wrong.  I do tend to hold them when I need to resettle - mainly cos they'll be quiet and won't wake the other, perhaps I just should be patting or something?  Is it right you can't do pupd with a dummy? 

The thing is if I can't get them to have a long pm nap what am I supposed to do?  Will they just magically one day sleep through?

[*Ali*]

I actually think H is doing just fine for a 7mo. He did a 11hr10 night with one NF. That is well within the realms of normal isn't it? In fact I think Tracy says the aim around this age is an 110.5hr-12hr night with a DF (or NF if you're not DFing).

Maybe J was genuinely hungry. I know you said sometimes he doesn't take a full feed at BT. Would you consider feeding him when he wakes? Maybe he wouldn't have had the second waking a couple hours later or would have been easier to settle. Again one feed over an 11hr+ night seems ok it me. The other wakings are annoying of course.

How are things going with watering down the bottles? I think you said that was the plan for weaning the NFs.

I guess the difficulty comes when you are dealing with them waking at different times and not getting the bigger chunks if sleep you would if only dealing with one of them. Have you tried waking H when J wakes and has a feed? I know a lot of mamas of twins find it easier to feed them both so they don't have another waking an hour or two later to feed the second twin. Would that work? Perhaps you could even see if he will take it in his sleep?

Obviously I don't have experience of feeding two at night but I know I often found syncing my twi's sleep better in terms of BT, WU and long naps really helped/helps me.

How do they go to sleep for naps and BT? Independent sleep will help them settle at night when they wake yes so if you are holding them to sleep then they probably will call for you to come do it again each time they wake. No PUPD isn't suitable with a dummy unless they can find and replug it completely independently.

[Shiv52]

I don't think you are doing anything wrong.  I'd say it'll take a good week to see if the longer PM nap is going to work and then another week to tweak the A times YK?

Starting with J, his naps were pretty good. So he did

Wake up 5.30?? (4 hours A time??)
Nap 9.45 (40 minutes)
Wake up 10.25 (2 hours 45 a time)
Nap 1.10 (1.5 hours)
Wake 2.40 (4 hours a time)
Bed 6.40

Woke 11.15/ NF 1.40/ wake up 4.55- resettled 5.50

I think that first NW was likely OT. I think you are heading in the right direction. Do you think they are on the higher ends of A times?  Id stick to similar today but I do wonder if he'll need 3 hours after the short nap and hopefully that'll make the nap longer than 1.5 hours.  But hold fire with that just yet.


Now the rascal H

Wake up 5.30 (4 hours A time)
Nap 9.45 (1 hour)
Wake 10.45 (2h35 A time)
Nap 1.20 (40 minutes)
Wake 2.00 (4h20 A time)
Bed 6.20
NF 2.45
Wake up 5.30

I think that PM nap was UT after the hour am nap. I always found mine could practicslly do a whole A time after an hour as opposed to J who needed a bit less with only 40 minutes. I think it's fine he does an hour nap but I'd push that next A time out to 3 hours to make sure he's not UT.  Pretty fab night. Well done H!!!

I think honestly on the whole they are actually doing well. I appreciate though with both you could be up a lot. I think though the solution lies in you and DH splitting the nights.  I think one of you needs to head on to bed early and get a decent sleep from 9 and then do from 4am onwards and the other one does the NWs and NFs. And swap the next night so at least every other night you are both getting 8/9 hours sleep before needing to be up at 5am.  I just think the babies are being babies and I fear you are going to drive yourself mad tweaking routines trying to get them to sleep better than they are capable of at the minute.  I do think the longer PM nap should help the OT at night and they'll keep having good nights like H did last night.  My BIL and SILs twins are a similar age and still having 1 NF. I know they say they would be divorced if they didn't get a decent nights sleep every other night and what I'm suggesting above is what they do. One used to go onto bed with their 4yo but he's going to bed much earlier now so they go about 9pm once the twins are in bed as they don't go to bed until later.

[4isstillnighttime]

I agree with splitting the nights Laura - if my husband is home I go to bed as early as I can and he deals with all night wakings til midnight. He doesn't really wake when the babies cry so he just stays up working or watching TV. They are easy to settle usually in that period too. Then I do midnight onwards, but if he's not working the next day he will then get up at 6 and give them breakfast so I can either snooze for an hour or at least have a long, hot shower! That way I get 4 hours or so in a block, he gets 6 hours, and we survive. If only he was home every night!!

I go through stages of waking the other twin at night. In general I don't though as I find the woken one is too sleepy to take a good feed anyway and it's really hard to resettle both at once if they are playing up. But I know plenty of people who do.

We'll all get there in the end I'm sure!

[Layla]

just to add to what Shiv said...mine was also able to do full 3hrs A on 40-45 min nap. We too went down the path of short am/long pm nap and it worked really well as I had school pick up and didn't need to worry about APg any afternoon catnaps as I wanted to be available for dd1 and 2. The other thing I did, which worked great for us, was to set a nap time as opposed to counting A's and regardless of the wake up, the morning nap was no earlier than 9am and that way we wouldn't fall into the trap of too early to bed/early to rise so perhaps you could set your morning nap to 9.30am and let them have 45mins in the morning and then do afternoon nap around 1.30pm?

[Shiv52]

Layla that's a great idea. Set naps would take the guessing out of it. I would set BT too though.  How long was your am nap?

[Uglybethy]

I too agree with the set naps thing... It's kindve what we are doing actually...
Worth a try?

[4isstillnighttime]

So are we trying to....but we are copying UB's EASY like it's gospel today so that's why!!

[babybarr]

I'm in agreement with set naps all the way. It's what sorted o's napping. Well it improved anyway. I just wasn't sure what times to set them at.

Today
J nap at 9.20am slept 40mins
Nap 1.10 woke after 40mins has resettled but it's not usually for long with him

H nap 9.25am I woke him after 45mins (yesterday he was woken by me at the hr mark)
Nap 1.05 woke after 55mins sort of half resettled. Not holding my breath just got him up at 2.25

I don't feed the sleeping one anymore as they vomit.

I don't know what to do about the settling. I know they can self settle and h in particular sleeps better. But the other day I woke j after 1hr 45mins so I know he can do it too! I could separate the
m for naps to allow me to work on self settling but surely doesn't everyone use a bit of ap to resettle a nap?

So what times would you suggest? Ideally so nap finished by 2.45pm and do I cap the am nap?