Hi Chana!! Congratulations on having two wonderful boys!!
I have 9month old twin girls and as I type that I'm thinking "gosh, I never thought I'd make it to 9months!!". Two small babies is tough work! It really does get better as time moves forward and I'm still in the position to hope it smooths out even more (as I wake yet another day at 5am for the day - ACK!!)
It's a bit of a juggle to keep them both on the same 'schedule' or EASY routine but I personally found it SO important for my own sanity.
- My babies usually fall asleep while feeding, and I find it hard to concentrate on keeping them both latched on and awake (I b/f them together). Usually I'm able to rouse them reasonably easily at the end of a feed for a play, but at night I'm happy for them just to fall asleep and (hopefully) go right back to bed. Is this OK?
I would say this is perfect! To this day I still put my girls to bed straight after that last feed. As they get older they will be able to stay awake during their whole daytime feed but until then as long as you are rousing them after it's fine. I think the main purpose of EASY (in my mind anyway) is to get your baby used to eating for the purpose of eating and then going to bed after being awake - so not getting used to feeding to go to sleep. This helps them in their journey to learn independent sleep.
- My biggest problem is getting the "A" to happen properly after the "E" and not having too short a cycle. At 10 weeks, they have still been feeding every three hours around the clock (birth weights were 2.5kg and 2.7kg - both about 4.5 kg now), however lately I am having the issue (this is during the day) that they feed for about 20min, play for around 40-50min, then bed (where they often settle fine), but then up again very quickly afterwards and I don't know what to do with them. They're normally happy to play until the next feed (three hours after the start of the previous one), but then if I do that, they're ready for sleep straight after the feed, which mucks it all up. Am I making any sense? Not sure what to do here.
Is there any chance or even enough time for them to have another little catnap before that next feed? Maybe not? For a long long time I'd put my girls back down even if it was just 30min to the next feed - just to help them be rested enough to stay up a bit after the feed. I often found (and still find sometimes) that if one of the girls woke early and I got her up and carried/held her for 10-15min, I could put her back down for a longer nap. Not sure I could do this already at 10weeks - mostly depending on where in the sleep cycle the other child was so as not to wake her while doing this. Although they become quite good at sleeping through the other's crying. Gosh each of them can fall asleep easily if the other is fussing at the beginning of sleep.
Otherwise, say they fall asleep feeding b/c they've been up for an hour already... could they be roused after a bit? Say let them feed the 20min and lay there snoozing for another 15min or so, could you then rouse them for some activity time? It's hard to break this cycle but I think if you are still managing to have them wake at some point for play time and then get back to a nap without feeding to sleep you should be ok. Again, I think the goal is to get lots of practice going to bed awake and being helped to settle in bed without nursing to sleep. Does that make sense?
- Bed time is driving me crazy. Ideally, I'd like to get them in bed by 7:00pm to 7:30pm-ish. I am not sure the best way to transition them into "bed" mode - we don't do an "A" after the feed that happens around this time (obviously), but then it is like they get up from their last "nap" of the day, feed and are meant to go straight back to bed. Should I be getting them up a little earlier from the last nap, having some play prior to the feed, then bath, PJ's, wrap feed and bed? Or something else? At the moment, I try putting them to bed, but we seem to spend LOTS of time (e.g an hour or more - sometimes right up to the next feed time) trying to get them to go to sleep. Usually after this initial chaotic period, after the next feed around 10pm ish, they seem to have found "nighttime mode" and go back to bed fine, same at the 1am and 4am feeds.
YES!! Bedtime was so hard for us here for SOOO many months and I have 2 older children I'd already done this with with no bedtime glitches... I was at such a loss as to why I could NOT figure these two girls out
(still am somedays!!) I think you do need to have some A time in here before this last feed. For a long time we were on 3naps or even 4naps - last one being around supper time and only for half an hour so if you are cluster feeding at this time there may be a feed at the end of their day followed by wake time and then that bedtime feed and then bed. Although as I said it took me a long time to figure out bed time. I think I finally just had to set it in my head how it was going to be and then I worked toward my goal rather than trying to figure out what they were doing.
- I have not read the DF chapter yet (so this may be answered), but I tried just lifting them out of the cot to put on the breast, but they are too asleep to take it. Are you meant to do it this way, or can I try to wake them a little by unwrapping/nappy change?
A true DF would happen as you've tried - while they stay asleep. Some babies do it and others don't. My first dd never took to it, would not open her mouth at all. My second dd took to it right away and we did a DF with her till she was 7months old and it worked a charm at helping her sleep through. Both girls though slept through from 9pm till 6-7am by 8weeks!!!
Now these two girls
they could do the DF but it seemed to play havoc with their sleep. Rarely helped them to sleep longer and often just caused them to wake more often. Eventually they were waking FOR this feed and still it wasn't giving them any longer stretches at night. So at 6months this was the first waking I tackled with PU/PD. Although at 10weeks I think your boys are too young for pu/pd imho. My point being that the DF only created problems this time around for us.
Sleep school huh? Never heard of it. Seems a silly thing to have a wait list for sleep school :lol: but gosh what a great business idea hey? I can see there being a wait list. Is there a money back guarantee? :lol: Well hopefully you won't need it.
It will balance out in time. It's a matter of your boys learning to fall asleep on their own - and to this end, as Tracy points out in her book, I think it's important to help them and guide them to sleep without leaving them to cry alone. They may well cry with you there in the room but this is much much different than them crying without you there. You want as positive experiences in their beds as possible without creating bad habits. Pat/shhh worked a charm to get my girls to sleep - but they became so dependent on it that I was up many times in the night (or with two, I was just up MOST of the night) so at 6months I finally decided I had to make some adjustments to get things on track.
Anyway, not sure if any of this helps. We also have a MULTIPLES board you should check out. We try to carry on a general chat about life with multiples and such.
This EASY board also has some lengthy 'chat' posts for babies of similar ages - not sure if there's one for Nov 05 or not but I'd look for it if I were you. I participate in a thread with lots of moms of babies born in April 05 and it's great to keep up with what is going on sleep and eating wise with other similarly aged babies. And you can get day to day input and ideas of what others have done to work out sleep.
AND of course just keep posting asking questions too.
