Nighttime awakenings

Azwildkat

Our twin boys are 11 weeks. We are trying to establish a routine for them and was hoping to get your ladies' input. The boys eat 3 oz every 2 hours during the day..we have been unable to give them more formula (they have reflux and get spitty or just lose interest) to try and space this to 3-4 hours. We are still using the preemie nipples, so not sure if that has something to do with it..

We give them a bath, bottle, rock and swaddle them and turn on the white noise around 630ish and try to put them to bed. The last couple nights we were even successful in putting them in their cribs (generally end up in PNP or swing for awhile). The last few nights, they slept for a good 4 hours (630 or 7pm to 10-11ish) and then consistently start stirring and start fussing every 2 hours and don't stop until fed and this goes on until morning when we start the routine again. 

Do you think they are truly hungry that often at night or are they just in the habit of waking up then? Any suggestions on how to get a longer evening stretch? I know people have recommended Baby Wise and CIO method, but I haven't had the heart to try it yet since they were 4 weeks preemie 

 

 

Missa_g

At 7w adjusted age they very well could be hungry. Newborns need to eat frequently. CIO is definitely not appropriate at this age, but do you use pacifiers? If my boys are fussy they gladly take one and will happily suck on it and fall back to sleep. If they're hungry they'll gobble at it, frantically suck for 30 seconds, spit it out and go right back to fussing.

ETA: I would also try going up a nipple speed. Our boys are 10w adjusted and on a medium flow.

regenab

At this point since they are only 7 weeks adjusted, this is pretty normal. I think it is good to stick to a great bedtime routine with an earlier bedtime starting at this point, but you will probably not see much longer stretches at night until they get to be about 12 weeks adjusted. That is when I started sleep training my girls to drop some nighttime feedings (I didn't do CIO). Untill that age they just needed more to eat at night because they were born early. Keep up the good work and your got about another month to go at least before you can try to train them to drop some night feedings. I used the book A Baby Sleep Solution by Suzy Giordiano to train my girls. Her plan has 4 stages and took about a month to complete. But even when we started with the plan at that point the girls were giving me one good 5-6 hour stretch at the beginning of the night (sleeping from 6pm-11:30/midnight).

The only thing I didn't follow with her plan was the nap schedule. She only has babies taking 2 naps a day when done with the plan and my girls needed 3 naps a day until they were 8 months adjusted, but my girls were big sleepers needing about 16 hours of sleep a day. So I followed them on naps instead of her recommendation.