Sleep training twins is possible. Encouragement from moms who have done it!
From Deidra: Our guys just turned five months too! We worked to keep ours on a three hour schedule (2.5 for the first two weeks to get back up to birth weight) and followed Babywise pretty closely. They were sleeping 10-11 hours right after their three month birthday with 6 feedings during the day. Once they stretched to 12 hours at night, they started doing just 5 feedings, but on more of a 2.5 hour schedule. Our doc said not to change anything (like adding solids) if they are sleeping through night. Like why mess with a good thing? The key for us was helping them work through the 45 minute intruder so their naps were at least 1.5 hours. They are still ready to go down after every feeding at about 60-70minutes after we started feeding them. They're big boys so I figure if they're up after a 1.5 hour nap and eating 6-8 oz each time, then I'm fine with the 2.5 hour sked and night time sleep! If I remember correctly, Babywise says about 75% will just start dropping night feeds and stretching longer and longer, but some will need to cry a bit. Jett fell in that 25%, although he didn't cry much before I'd slip in a pacifier so he wouldn't wake brother. The paci was what kept stretching him for us.
Sometimes with twins it's just not feasible to let them cry through a 45 minute intruder or in the night! I've read that the American Academy of Pediatrics said babies can actually cry for 15 minutes in the night and not actually be awake! So I'd set my timer for ten minutes and let him cry before going for the paci since Jax usually would sleep through his crying in the night. Also, since we did "20 minutes of grace," they were learning to self-soothe at the same time so it was OK if they were both fussing/crying at the same time at the beginning of nap time.
Twin Sleep Training
From the moment we got home, we put them on a schedule. We started out on a 2.5 hour "Eat, Wake, Sleep" schedule so they'd get back up to birth weight (took four days for my milk to come in). After their two week appt, we moved to a 3 hour schedule. When I consulted with my pediatrician about this, he said, "a baby given the opportunity to eat only every three hours will adjust his intake at each feeding." And they sure did! At their one month appt, Jax was in the 70% and Jett was in the 50% for weight. There isn't a different scale for twins even though they are typically born weighing less. Jett weighed 6,11 and Jax weighed 8,0. Jett often woke around the 2.5-2.75 hour mark and we'd stretch him to 3 hours with a paci and cuddling. More often than not, we had to wake Jax from his nap to feed. 3 hours was a perfect happy medium.
Up to 6 weeks schedule: I am not a morning person, so we decided a 9a-9p schedule would be ideal. Also, when we got home from the hospital and thought we could sleep in the same bed with the babies in the room, we found that was not ideal. They slept in a twin Pack-n-play in the game room and we slept in another room. One of us would sleep in the bedroom right next to the babies and the other would sleep in the next room over with ear plugs and white noise. We were always hearing phantom cries so we knew ONE of us should be getting quality sleep each cycle.
They ate 8 times a day and I tandem breastfed them for 6 of those feedings. I pumped after each feeding and that would make enough for me to take two of the feedings "off" and the boys would take a bottle from dad/grandma/MIL so I could sleep. I got two 4-hour chunks in that way so I was never really "sleep-deprived." I usually "took off" for the 6am and 3pm feeding. It took about an hour and 15 minutes to do the whole feeding, changing, laying them down and then pumping routine. So when I finished the 3am routine, I'd get in bed around 430a, put earplugs in and Daniel was on duty until he left around 7am. I usually was able to sleep until 830-9a until Jett woke up. Same thing for the afternoon feed I'd take off. If I didn't take that afternoon nap (ya know - for events like weddings, showers, birthdays) I could tell a huge plummet in supply. Sleep and water were so KEY! I also gladly took up Verna's ice cream theory. I dropped the baby weight in like two weeks. I never counted calories, but I was definitely eating around 1000 calories more a day since I was making enough milk for twins. Man do I miss that!
Sleep training after 6 weeks:
We were building a house when I was pregnant. Although the builder was supposed to be finished two months before the twins were due, they were of course delayed and we didn't move in until the boys were six weeks old. Since I'd no longer have the live-in help of my in-laws, we knew it would be time to let them "stretch" as long as they could after the Midnight dream feed. This worked like a charm. They dropped the 3am feeding almost instantly and then Daniel fed them at 6am before leaving for work.
Daytime naps is where we next began to work toward consistency. We employed the 20 minutes of grace for every nap and bedtime. It took about four days before they'd go down without much fussing. Jett made it 20 minutes about 4-5 times and Jax only made it to 20 once. I kept a journal over that first week to see trends and that was really helpful. We'd put them to sleep without pacis, but if they woke early or during the 45 minute intruder, we'd slip in the pacifiers to get them back to sleep quickly. Jax ended up finding his thumb and Jett would suck on his pointer finger. Since they were both tummy sleepers, it wasn't long that they could wiggle around the crib and find their pacifiers. Jett still uses a pacifier and Jax sucks his thumb with a silk-lined lovey.
With twins, it was highly recommended that if one twin wakes in the middle of the night, you wake the other and feed him too. It would be awful if you fed one, got back in bed, just to have the other wake with hunger shortly after. Jax definitely could have slept through the night earlier, but I didn't want to risk it and always woke him when Jett got up. Because they shared a room, they were great at tuning out cries in the middle of the night, so when Jett would wake up, we'd keep slipping in a paci until that no longer appeased him and then would feed him.
We started this routine around 10 weeks to get them to drop the 6am feed - we were at the beach for a week while they were 11 weeks and progress stalled. We resumed when we got home and they started sleeping after the 12am dream feed until 9am. I decided to drop the dream feed at 13 weeks (but would still pump then to maintain supply and use to supplement the next day). I did this by slowly moving up the time of the dream feed. So instead of 12am, I fed them at 1130pm for a few nights, then 11pm, then 1030pm and then just stopped. That's when I'd say they started sleeping from 9-9! I can count on my hand when they've woken in the middle of the night and taken a bottle and they're over a year now. Don't get me wrong, they've still had sleep disturbances and illnesses where they've slept on my chest in a rocking chair, but they no longer woke from hunger.
It took until about 6 months of age where they would go down without a peep. Sometimes a little fussing for a minute or two, but pretty quick to get settled.
At 9 months, Jett started having a clockwork sleep disturbance at 10pm. He went to bed at 830p and like clockwork, he'd stand up, cry, and we'd run in to soothe him. He'd fall limp almost immediately and we'd lay him right back down. He did this off and on for at least a month. Eventually he'd stand, cry, and just collapse back down without our intervention at all, but it made this mamas heart happy to cuddle for a minute since I never rocked them to sleep. But doc said that was a typical sleep regression age so if that's all that it was, we were happy to accommodate!
At 14 months, Jett started protesting bed time. These babies are so "Pavlov-ed." As soon as we start singing "Jesus Loves Me," Jax's thumb goes in his mouth and Jett lays his head on our chest. They know it's sleep time!! But when we'd do our bedtime routine, Jett was fighting it with extreme cries. Everytime they cried when going down, we knew something had to be wrong because they were so good at self-soothing! Sure enough, one had a poopy diaper or leg stuck in a crib slat, etc. Well when we'd analyze for possible reason for him to cry, we'd find nothing, so we'd let him stay up a little longer, as he was super happy and content. Just thought he was needing less sleep! Well he started protesting naps too, so I called on the advice of my dearest Kristen Wilkinson, and she said this age was a time to allow for a longer cry-it-out period and that he was probably just tantruming that it was nap time. Boy was she right. I hated hearing him cry for those 40 minutes at nap time, but there was nothing else I could do for him since holding him was fruitless and I knew he needed the rest. He finally collapsed and took a good nap. Jax slept threw the whole thing. He cried for the next nap for about 5 minutes and same thing at bed time, but the protesting dwindled to minutes and seconds after a day or two and he's never looked back. The last month has been the normal and glorious time of two 1.5 hour naps. We do a 2-3-4 schedule (the numbers correlate to hours of wake time before a nap and the dash is the nap). Some people put their babies on this schedule as early as 6 months, but our boys held on to a 45 minute catnap until 9 months (for a total of 3 hours and 45 minutes of napping).
Our two crucial items for good sleeping was a box fan for loud white noise and our Blackout curtain that actually suctions to the window. That way I can have my cute decorative curtains hanging on the outside. We keep a traveling blackout curtain for naps away from home. I loved the myBrestFriend twin pillow when tandem nursing and the Z Twin Pillow for when they were propped up taking bottles.
Sometimes with twins it's just not feasible to let them cry through a 45 minute intruder or in the night! I've read that the American Academy of Pediatrics said babies can actually cry for 15 minutes in the night and not actually be awake! So I'd set my timer for ten minutes and let him cry before going for the paci since Jax usually would sleep through his crying in the night. Also, since we did "20 minutes of grace," they were learning to self-soothe at the same time so it was OK if they were both fussing/crying at the same time at the beginning of nap time.
Twin Sleep Training
From the moment we got home, we put them on a schedule. We started out on a 2.5 hour "Eat, Wake, Sleep" schedule so they'd get back up to birth weight (took four days for my milk to come in). After their two week appt, we moved to a 3 hour schedule. When I consulted with my pediatrician about this, he said, "a baby given the opportunity to eat only every three hours will adjust his intake at each feeding." And they sure did! At their one month appt, Jax was in the 70% and Jett was in the 50% for weight. There isn't a different scale for twins even though they are typically born weighing less. Jett weighed 6,11 and Jax weighed 8,0. Jett often woke around the 2.5-2.75 hour mark and we'd stretch him to 3 hours with a paci and cuddling. More often than not, we had to wake Jax from his nap to feed. 3 hours was a perfect happy medium.
Up to 6 weeks schedule: I am not a morning person, so we decided a 9a-9p schedule would be ideal. Also, when we got home from the hospital and thought we could sleep in the same bed with the babies in the room, we found that was not ideal. They slept in a twin Pack-n-play in the game room and we slept in another room. One of us would sleep in the bedroom right next to the babies and the other would sleep in the next room over with ear plugs and white noise. We were always hearing phantom cries so we knew ONE of us should be getting quality sleep each cycle.
They ate 8 times a day and I tandem breastfed them for 6 of those feedings. I pumped after each feeding and that would make enough for me to take two of the feedings "off" and the boys would take a bottle from dad/grandma/MIL so I could sleep. I got two 4-hour chunks in that way so I was never really "sleep-deprived." I usually "took off" for the 6am and 3pm feeding. It took about an hour and 15 minutes to do the whole feeding, changing, laying them down and then pumping routine. So when I finished the 3am routine, I'd get in bed around 430a, put earplugs in and Daniel was on duty until he left around 7am. I usually was able to sleep until 830-9a until Jett woke up. Same thing for the afternoon feed I'd take off. If I didn't take that afternoon nap (ya know - for events like weddings, showers, birthdays) I could tell a huge plummet in supply. Sleep and water were so KEY! I also gladly took up Verna's ice cream theory. I dropped the baby weight in like two weeks. I never counted calories, but I was definitely eating around 1000 calories more a day since I was making enough milk for twins. Man do I miss that!
Sleep training after 6 weeks:
We were building a house when I was pregnant. Although the builder was supposed to be finished two months before the twins were due, they were of course delayed and we didn't move in until the boys were six weeks old. Since I'd no longer have the live-in help of my in-laws, we knew it would be time to let them "stretch" as long as they could after the Midnight dream feed. This worked like a charm. They dropped the 3am feeding almost instantly and then Daniel fed them at 6am before leaving for work.
Daytime naps is where we next began to work toward consistency. We employed the 20 minutes of grace for every nap and bedtime. It took about four days before they'd go down without much fussing. Jett made it 20 minutes about 4-5 times and Jax only made it to 20 once. I kept a journal over that first week to see trends and that was really helpful. We'd put them to sleep without pacis, but if they woke early or during the 45 minute intruder, we'd slip in the pacifiers to get them back to sleep quickly. Jax ended up finding his thumb and Jett would suck on his pointer finger. Since they were both tummy sleepers, it wasn't long that they could wiggle around the crib and find their pacifiers. Jett still uses a pacifier and Jax sucks his thumb with a silk-lined lovey.
With twins, it was highly recommended that if one twin wakes in the middle of the night, you wake the other and feed him too. It would be awful if you fed one, got back in bed, just to have the other wake with hunger shortly after. Jax definitely could have slept through the night earlier, but I didn't want to risk it and always woke him when Jett got up. Because they shared a room, they were great at tuning out cries in the middle of the night, so when Jett would wake up, we'd keep slipping in a paci until that no longer appeased him and then would feed him.
We started this routine around 10 weeks to get them to drop the 6am feed - we were at the beach for a week while they were 11 weeks and progress stalled. We resumed when we got home and they started sleeping after the 12am dream feed until 9am. I decided to drop the dream feed at 13 weeks (but would still pump then to maintain supply and use to supplement the next day). I did this by slowly moving up the time of the dream feed. So instead of 12am, I fed them at 1130pm for a few nights, then 11pm, then 1030pm and then just stopped. That's when I'd say they started sleeping from 9-9! I can count on my hand when they've woken in the middle of the night and taken a bottle and they're over a year now. Don't get me wrong, they've still had sleep disturbances and illnesses where they've slept on my chest in a rocking chair, but they no longer woke from hunger.
It took until about 6 months of age where they would go down without a peep. Sometimes a little fussing for a minute or two, but pretty quick to get settled.
At 9 months, Jett started having a clockwork sleep disturbance at 10pm. He went to bed at 830p and like clockwork, he'd stand up, cry, and we'd run in to soothe him. He'd fall limp almost immediately and we'd lay him right back down. He did this off and on for at least a month. Eventually he'd stand, cry, and just collapse back down without our intervention at all, but it made this mamas heart happy to cuddle for a minute since I never rocked them to sleep. But doc said that was a typical sleep regression age so if that's all that it was, we were happy to accommodate!
At 14 months, Jett started protesting bed time. These babies are so "Pavlov-ed." As soon as we start singing "Jesus Loves Me," Jax's thumb goes in his mouth and Jett lays his head on our chest. They know it's sleep time!! But when we'd do our bedtime routine, Jett was fighting it with extreme cries. Everytime they cried when going down, we knew something had to be wrong because they were so good at self-soothing! Sure enough, one had a poopy diaper or leg stuck in a crib slat, etc. Well when we'd analyze for possible reason for him to cry, we'd find nothing, so we'd let him stay up a little longer, as he was super happy and content. Just thought he was needing less sleep! Well he started protesting naps too, so I called on the advice of my dearest Kristen Wilkinson, and she said this age was a time to allow for a longer cry-it-out period and that he was probably just tantruming that it was nap time. Boy was she right. I hated hearing him cry for those 40 minutes at nap time, but there was nothing else I could do for him since holding him was fruitless and I knew he needed the rest. He finally collapsed and took a good nap. Jax slept threw the whole thing. He cried for the next nap for about 5 minutes and same thing at bed time, but the protesting dwindled to minutes and seconds after a day or two and he's never looked back. The last month has been the normal and glorious time of two 1.5 hour naps. We do a 2-3-4 schedule (the numbers correlate to hours of wake time before a nap and the dash is the nap). Some people put their babies on this schedule as early as 6 months, but our boys held on to a 45 minute catnap until 9 months (for a total of 3 hours and 45 minutes of napping).
Our two crucial items for good sleeping was a box fan for loud white noise and our Blackout curtain that actually suctions to the window. That way I can have my cute decorative curtains hanging on the outside. We keep a traveling blackout curtain for naps away from home. I loved the myBrestFriend twin pillow when tandem nursing and the Z Twin Pillow for when they were propped up taking bottles.