Monday, April 21, 2014

Sleep

I knew I'd write more than one post on this topic. Babies change so much and so do their sleeping patterns. Well, that's definitely the case at our house. 

Nights have not been good. Prior to vacation the girls were trying to shift their schedule to earlier nights and mornings, but I didn't want to change anything seeing how it was 2 hours earlier there. I wasn't looking to start our days at 5 am Mexico time. 

When we got back we made the change. The girls started getting up for the day at 7, 7:30 ish. For me this meant about 2 fewer hours of sleeping in the morning and much more awake time before W returns from work around 4:15. You can tell which routine I preferred. 

We are still on a 3 hour schedule. The girls eat, play, and then typically nap for 45 mins to an hour prior to starting it all again. They still act hungry and want to eat every 3 hours. 

The daytime routine is working fine. Some days they skip some naps when we are out and about, but generally everything is going well. 

Night time is another story altogether. It used to be that I'd feed them before bed around 10 or 10:30, feed Lucy once more around 3 or 4 am, then feed both around 9:00 am. 

Now it feels like there's no structure or routine at night. They've been eating somewhere around 7:30 and then going down around 9:30. Depending on the night, I individually wake them for a dream feed somewhere around 10:30, 11:00. They go right back down to sleep in their cribs. 

This is what seems to start a free for all. Since vacation and being sick they are waking a lot during the night. W typically does the soothing at night because he is the lighter sleeper and hears them much sooner than me. 

It seems lately the paci replacements aren't doing the trick. He says he tries that 2-3 times first, but then brings them in bed. This means I'm doing much more night feedings lately. There have been nights where I feed both babies twice during the night. To be honest, I'm so tired and it's so much easier to just stick them on my boob than try to figure out the problem or rock them. I don't have to get up. I just have to whip out my boob and pull a baby close. 

Our laziness is not working well. The girls are up a lot during the night. They have regressed to both eating at night, and pretty much every morning arrives with both babies in our bed. Not good. 

I think we need to try to let them cry it out, but with Lucy's lack of consistent weight gain I also think she may still need a night time feeding. I'm fine with feeding her once, but twice seems like a little much. I don't think she really sleeps any long stretches during the night when she used to months ago. 

I'm at a loss. Do we let them cry it out? Do I "Ferber-ize" them? Both girls are still stuffy and I think this is contributing to more wake-ups. Also, they are both in cloth and most mornings have leaked through to their clothes. Would disposables at night help them to sleep longer? 

Any tips or advice is appreciated! What worked for you in this or a similar situation? 

6 comments:

  1. Before you do anything else, check out troublesometots.com -- Alexis has SO MUCH great advice about sleep, and it was eye opening to me how many things I was doing that were sabatoging good sleep for all of us with Stella.

    Also, around 7.5 months is when shit hit the fan with Stella's sleep and I wrote a bunch about it here:
    http://mycheapversionoftherapy.com/2012/07/30/sleeping-a-work-in-progress/
    http://mycheapversionoftherapy.com/2012/09/15/a-sleep-update/

    Beyond that - here are a few tips, but what works for everyone is different, so maybe take it worth a grain of salt. Just remember that people can get SUPER heated about sleep stuff. Hopefully ppl will stay nice in your comments!

    1) Get back on a consistent routine at night. Bath/pjs/book/etc.
    2) Move bedtime earlier, probably closer to 7-7:30. Seems counterintuitive, but the earlier I put my kids to bed, the later (and better) they sleep, and I've head this from a LOT of parents.
    3) Don't do a dream feed - I'm not saying to not night nurse still if they still need it, but hopefully you can just do one night feeding later in the night if they still need it. Harder for you in some ways, but better if you can just do it once and they are getting a nice, long chunk of sleep before that.
    4) Let them fuss a bit before you go in. There is a HUGE difference between giving them 5 min to hopefully settle themselves and go back to sleep and doing CIO. If you can help them learn to settle themselves now, you can hopefully avoid doing CIO in the future. I 100% went to Stella too quickly at that age (the first 3 months I responded ASAP - so age adjust that for you girls), but eventually they just know that if they cry, you'll come, and you don't want them to need you patting their butts or replacing a paci of whatever to get back to sleep.
    5) Consider getting rid of the pacis. http://www.troublesometots.com/how-to-use-and-loose-the-pacifier/

    Like I said, maybe these tips will work for you, maybe they won't, but if you do nothing else, check out troublesometots!! Good luck. :)

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  2. Oh, and regarding the wet diaper, either (1) change them before the middle of the night nursing into a fresh diaper, or (2) use disposables at night. Eventually we switched to disposables at night b/c of the wetness issue (10-12 hrs is a LONG time for a cloth diaper) and I don't regret it one bit. :)

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  3. We just started using Mother-Ease Bamboo cloth diapers at night. It lasts us until our diaper change and feed at 3:00 AM.

    I am just starting to consider sleep training for our little guy, hoping to start no later than 3 months (so, 5 weeks to go). I really appreciate the link to troublesometots above!

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  4. We used an extra soaker at night. I can't remember the brand now, but I'm sure we ordered from Amazon. That worked for an entire night (8-10 hours). Now that the kid poops almost every morning before a diaper change and sleeps 10-12 hours, we have simply succumbed to disposables at night. Also the Marc Weissbluth book is very good. Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. Don't freak out if you're not "doing it right." None of us is! Good luck!

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  5. Oh the darn sleep! There are so many regressions and reasons behind the wakings. I agree with a lot of what Josey said. Good advice. We tried to break the night paci's to prevent C waking every time it dropped out of his mouth. Waiting to night feed while cutting dream feed and bedtime gradually earlier is good too. We worked our way backward from 10 pm to 7:30 pm over a couple of months.
    Also, I have found that Huggies Overnights are awesome. My son pee's a lot and the only time they leak is if he has slept a full 11-12 hours mostly on his stomach. At least try it so you don't have to change them at night.

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  6. You're doing real well! We have used a sleep consultant and I can agree with Josey. We were also encouraged to start with keeping our daytime schedule really consistent and this helped night come together better though it is still a work in progress. Sleep with twins is tough work!

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