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Multiples
sleep training for naps at 5.5mos (33.5wkers)
i'd like to do dr. weissbluth's nap program (they need very little help going down at night, and only wake to eat 99% of the time)...so, it means soothing for a set amount of time, then letting the girls cry for up to an hour (if they don't fall asleep before), to help them learn to sleep on their own. right now i have to rock/bounce each baby and it's actually getting harder to put them down for naps as they get older. i think i have been doing them a disservice by soothing to the point of sleep every time. i'd love to get them on a nap schedule now for my own sanity, as well as for their benefit.
my girls were not SO premature, and i think they are just a tiny little bit behind developmentally. is it ok??
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Re: sleep training for naps at 5.5mos (33.5wkers)
i hear you on gest. age. (i posted on the preemie board, but it is so slow over there). i have mixed feelings myself... but what should i do instead?? SO many MOMs sleep train way earlier than 5.5mos. looking for something to help my girls get their naps during the day. it seems like they are not getting enough sleep during the day! i have moved bedtime earlier to a little before 7pm and that seems to have helped lenghten nightime sleep.
I used HSH, HC more as a guide for schedule. How long are they napping during the day? I used to do no more than an hour and a half up at that age. My boys had 3 naps at that age as well, 10:30-12:30, 2-3:30, 5-5:45 and then we'd do meal time, bath, books, bed by 7:30.
Have you looked for the cues as to when they are tired? Could they be overtired and not napping well? Have you started to keep track of when they are fussy and started to put them down about 30 minutes before they are fussy? Once they become that way, it is past the point of no return.
I am no sleep expert, believe me, my 2 year old is the WORST sleeper EVER! But, he also followed this napping pattern until my MIL got ahold of him and stopped napping him when she babysat when he was around 18 months old. He has sleep issues to begin with and doesn't sleep much at night BUT he would follow the same nap pattern at your girls' age.
mommyof4boys,
so your boys woke at 9am??? and first nap was at 10:30!? holy cow.
i've tried the "baby sleep, 90minute naps program" by dr. polly moore. i abslutely buy that they have a 90min alertness clock. maybe i need to get back to that more. but that's ALOT of naps, and when they don't go down easy to begin with, it's A TON of bouncing/rocking.
today they woke at 5:50am. got them down for nap #1 at about 7:30, and they woke about 8:20... these 45-50min naps, which leave me exhausted and frustrated by noon. so much work putting them down just to wake up less than an hour later. now, it's not ALWAYS like that. one or both girls will take a longer (every couple days a 2 1/2hr or 3hr) nap at some point. even though i want them to be on the same schedule, i can never bring myself to wake a baby just because her sister wants yet another cat nap. maybe they just are young dev. speaking, like you say. and the longer naps will evolve.
i will try to keep track of what times they are getting fussy as well. i do think they are getting over tired.
thanks for your input... much appreciated!
Yup, they woke up around 9 on most days. They still like their sleep (and so do I)! Also, we tried the "pat-pat" when they got up before we wanted them to. We went in their room and patted them on the back since they slept best on their bellies and with them having reflux it was more comfy to have the pressure on their bellies. Jon also took naps in his swing for a long time. I would wake up one baby if the other woke up. It will help to keep them on the same schedule.
We bought room darkening shades which helped, would rock to get them drousy and then put them in with their Ocean Wonders thing, put it on and if need be pat them to sleep.
I am sorry this post is going to be very long, but I went through a lot myself at this age until I figureed most of this out.
I have HSHHC as well and used it as more of a guide to help through difficult period of sleep transition, such as they are getting up too early in the morning or when they went down to 1 nap at day after a year old that kind of thing. I didn't find it very helpful when it came to actually figuring out a good schedule/routine for the girls in regards to naps and bedtime.
For actual sleep training I used The Baby Sleep Solution by Suzy Giordiano. She is a baby coach here in the DC Metro area that has a set of twins herself and developed her methods with her own newborn twins, so she has been in the trenches if you know what I mean. It is a 4 part plan on getting your babies to STTN 12 hours without waking to feed and part of her approach goes over ways to help your babies learn to self soothe themselves to sleep. She does not do CIO, especially for small children. She uses a modified self soothing technique at this age and it worked well with my girls. Her book is a very small paperback that can be read in a 2 hour period so you can start using it right away, not spend 2 weeks trying to read the book while caring for twins. I didn't do full on CIO until my girls were 13 months old and we took the pacis away and they needed to learn how to sleep without them, I knew they could and they didn't need me, so I let them do some CIO during naps and if they woke up early in the morning, since they no longer had their pacis to put back in their mouths to go back to sleep.
Her method of soothing is to teach your little ones to self soothe, not just letting them CIO until they do it on their own. You start by putting them to bed drowsy, following your same bedtime routine every night. If they start crying you let them go 3-5 min. (whichever you feel more comfortable with), then you go back in and soothe them from the side of the crib, rub their side, ssh them, but do not engage in talking or picking them up. Once they calm down you leave the room again. If they start crying, not fussing, actual crying, you wait the 3-5 min. again and go in and do the same thing again. Eventually they will quiet down and fall asleep. If they stop crying before the 3-5 min. are up and then start up again, you start the clock over again.
The first 2 nights I had to go in about 3 times after putting them to bed and by the third night I only had to go in maybe once. If you stick to this method they will start to learn to fall asleep on their own for both naps and bedtime. I like her ideas that you are getting across to your baby that you know it is hard, but you are right their with them next to the crib, but you are not going to do it for them. I don't like the CIO for long period of time because I don't think they learn they just pass out from exhaustion from crying for so long. This of course is just my opinion.
Now I am not saying you should never pick your kids up if they are crying in their crib, you have to use your own judgement. If they are just not calming down and are acutally escalating their crying then something is probably going on and you need to pick them up of course.
My girls were only born 4 weeks early so they were only preterm and not preemies but I adjusted their age for the first year. Most of the time they were on target for their real age or maybe just a week or 2 back, but in other things they really were on that adjusted age, especially when it came down to sleeping and feeding. My girls took 3 naps a day until they were almost 8 months old (7 months adjusted) where my friends full term baby dropped to 2 naps a day at 7 months old. So I agree with PP that it would be best to adjust their age for this kind of thing.
If you do decide to pick up the Baby Sleep Solution, the only thing I did not follow in her plan was the 4th part which is napping, she claims that once the plan is complete you child will be napping only 2 times a day as early as 4 months old. I let my girls determine their napping needs. They slept 12-13 hours a night and still took 3 naps a day because they just needed that much sleep. I don't think you can fit all babies into one category when it comes to the amount of sleep they need. I do believe that babies need at least 14-16 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period and you need to figure out where your babies fall in that range and how they need to aquire the amount of sleep they need. So if it means 3 naps a day to get to it then so be it. So I felt it was best to use any sleep book as a guide, but not follow it to the letter if you find your babies just don't fit the mold, make it work for your babies needs.
Here are my tips for good napping during the day:
1) At this age I followed the no more than 2 hour wakeful time between naps. My smaller twin could not go much more than 90 min. so I would get her ready first and take her upstairs and put her down, then go back down and get the bigger twin and get her ready and by the time I got her upstairs she was ready for nap because it was within 15 min. of being 2 hours. This worked because the smaller twin also usually required more sleep. But you may having them sleeping at different times during the day, but hopefully they will fall into a concurrent nap schedule for you soon.
2) Try to follow your nightime routine as much as possible during the day. I am not saying you have to go as far as bathing them and putting them in pjs, but if you use a sound machine at night, turn it on for naps as well. Also try to make their room as much like night during the day for naps. I suggest black out shades or I put up black felt in the upper half of their windows behind their curtains, so it is darker in the room. I swaddled my girls with their arms out during the day for naps, so they would feel similar to their sleep sacks at night and I did this until they were about 9 months old.
3) It is going to stink for a while, but try to give them as much non-motion naps as you can, meaning in their cribs instead of in a stroller or in the car. Of course sometimes this cannot be helped because you are traveling or they fall asleep on the ride home from a trip to the mall. But as much as you can try to put them down for naps in their cribs in their room since that is where they sleep at night. They will sleep better in their cribs not in motion and you want them to learn to nap well now when they are young so as they get older they are more well rested for activities. I think I didn't really go further than 15-20 min. from my house until they were about 10 months old because I wanted to protect their nap schedule. My family and friends often made comments because I was so rigid about this, but they also did not have to put up with 2 melting down infants at the end of the day when they didn't get their sleep.
4) You are at a hard time right now because they can sleep longer, but are still trying to figure out all of this nap and sleep stuff, but once you get past this point, things will seem so much better.
Lastly, Here is a look at my schedule when the girls were about 4 months old:
7AM Wake up/change diaper/dress and feed
7:30-8:15AM Activity time on playmat then some tummy time about 45 min. after their ate. At 8:15 I would start to see drowsy signs from the smaller twin. I would put the bigger twin in the pack and play, turn on the crib soother I hung up on the side of the pack and play (We had the Fisher Price Ocean Wonders, she loved to watch the big fish move and it plays music), then I would change the smaller twin, wrap her up, sing to her softly, then walk her upstairs and put her down to sleep, turn on the sound machine and walk back downstairs and get the bigger twin ready.
8:30/8:45 - 9:30 Nap time
9:30 - Wake up, play time, some swing time for each and play on activity mat
11:00AM - Feed second bottle of day. Then start naptime routine from earlier again.
11:15/11:30 - 1:00 Nap time
1:00 - Wake up, play time, swing activity mat.
2:30/2:45 - Feed third bottle of day. Naptime routine again.
3:00 - 4:30 Nap
4:30 - Wake up, playtime with DH.
6:00 - Start bedtime routine, finish routine with last bottle of the day.
6:30 - Bedtime
All of the times listed above were approx., I usually started the day at around 7, but if they woke up early from the first nap, I adjusted the times throughout the day. I just always made sure there was no more than 2 hours between naps and tried to start the bedtime routine between 6 and 6:30, so bedtime was before 7PM. After a while, I didn't even really need to look at the clock they fell into such a good routine that I could tell you what time of day it was based on when they were ready to nap or do to bed at night.
regenab, thank you so much for all this input! i am sucking down all these sleep books at this point... will be picking up gioriano's book next.
it is reassuring to know my girls are not "behind" like i thought they were. it's just been frustrating with eating/sleep schedules. they took so much longer to sttn (just the basic 6hrs sttn), and every stage has taken longer. but i think they are just moving at their own pace, and definitely making progress! my "active" baby has moved on to 45min naps... no more of the 11min naps she used to have - so glad for that.
as for # of naps. as long as my girls are taking their 2nd nap of the day by 10:30 or 11am, there will be at least 3 naps in a day! i don't get how i can make my girls sleep later than 6am if they want to get up... well, i'll update when the black out curtains i ordered are hung