words of wisdom when sleep training twins

nikkim76

I am having such a hard time with this. I am trying to get DD to get through her 4 am night waking and every time I say I am going to let her cry so she learns to soothe herself I go and get her. They both also need to learn to go down unassisted and be ok which we are working on. But we need to do this so  I can  sleep and also because I don't want her to wake her sister which she has done. So, she comes to bed with me. How did you get through it and how long does it take. Its just hard when one sttn great and the other one no so great. She doesn't need a bottle and nothing else is going on that I can think of other then I am used to mommy coming for me now. We can't get into this habit and I need her to sleep better. Would you recommend maybe messing up other DD who sleeps great (aside from some protesting initially) for a few nights to get this one on track? I don't really have the room in my house to seperate them. We have a small house and I have thought about this and how we could but its impossible. I just need to suck it up and do it for her and my sleep I guess. Others experiences would be helpful!

finallyreilly

We had 2 good sleepers until about 5 1/2 months when DD started waking up in the night.  It started out just once or twice but by 6 months she was up every night about 4 times a night.  We would run in, put her pacifier in her mouth and she would go right back to sleep. 

 At our 6 month app, our pedi said we had to let her cry and work it out.  I was like obviously you don't have twins that share a room.  We followed what she said though and the first night DD cried about 5 minutes before we went in and then we just kept extending the time.  Eventually she learned to put herself back to sleep.  It took about a week of painful retraining but we are all back to STTN again.  Both wake up occasionally now during the night and cry for a few minutes, but they put themselves right back to sleep.

During the retraining, my biggest fear was the DS would wake if we let her cry, but he only ever did once and he went right back to sleep.

GL.  It will suck for about a week, but it is worth it in the end.