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Multiples
Hack my nighttime routine (please!)
As I mentioned in my other post ( https://community.thebump.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/60584038.aspx ), my six week old twins and I are about to be cut loose from the help from my awesome MIL that we've had since they came home from the hospital.
Until now, my mother-in-law and I have had a sort of shift system for overnight baby care, but I'll be doing it mostly on my own in the future, as my husband has to be able to function at his job. The current setup just doesn't seem sustainable for one person. Let me break it down for you, and I'd appreciate feedback on what I could do more efficiently/better, as well as what I should expect to happen developmentally in upcoming weeks.
For reference, my twins are six weeks old, and were born at 37 weeks exactly. We nurse and supplement with formula.
Getting the twins down in the evening requires a fairly big formula meal, followed by 20-30 minutes of nursing. I find swaddling to help the process somewhat, but because of the nursing, I've been pretty central to the process. It can take a couple of tries to get them to stay down - they don't always go to sleep or stay that way.
They sleep about 3 hours at a stretch. So if they go down at 9, they're up around midnight. Generally, we start formula bottles warming, change their diapers, nurse them to satisfaction, feed them their bottles, burp, then nurse them to sleep. (We nurse in the living room, on a comfy chair that unfortunately doesn't lend itself well to sleep or reclining to nurse.) With two people, this process can take easily 1.5 to 2 hours. Again, it can take a couple of tries to get them to stay down. Three hours later, we're at it again. The formula and the nursing to sleep are pretty non-negotiable for my kids right now.
Often, one baby will wake up at ~2 hours after going down, have to be fed, soothed, and put back down, and then the other will wake up almost immediately after and need the same thing. I can spend four or five hours of the night juggling babies.
I get that my babies are still young and that this is supposed to be hard, but what can I do to ease the process so I can survive this stage without live-in help?
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Re: Hack my nighttime routine (please!)
First of all, big high five for making your way through the toughest part of this wild journey, feeding by feeding, day by day. When I was doing the "triple duty" schedule (nursing, supplementing formula & pumping) every feeding around the clock, it felt like insanity. I thought there was no way I could continue doing all 3, so I got clearance from our Pedi to wean off the formula. That helped us a lot, but I know you said that's not really an option for you right now, so here are 2 other thoughts that might help.
At about 6-8 weeks, I decided their middle of the night feed (2am for us - the one I was hoping they would drop first) should be only bottle so they wouldn't be waking for the breast. I would bottle feed them breastmilk, put them down, pump, and be back in bed again in an hour (instead of 1.5-2 like you were saying). It gave me a break from nursing and also helped us get a little more sleep, so it felt like a win-win.
Also, we were doing one up, both up still at that age. As much as it seems easier in the moment to just feed the one who woke up and let the other sleep, playing ping-pong all night back and forth between the two of them is nuts. You'll never get any sleep that way, so waking the sleeping baby up might help.
My only other thought looking at your schedule is that you're nursing them twice each time - this has gotta be killin you, mama. The best thing to work on might be training them to fall asleep without the breast. That would cut one step out of the whole routine. Do you have any luck rocking them to sleep? I'm sorry I don't have any miracle suggestions that fit within the parameters you gave. Best of luck.
Wow, reading that made my heart hurt for you. My DH went back to work 3 days a week when my babies were 2 weeks old and back full time when they were 4 weeks old. On the nights he works, I took care of/take care of the babies on my own. I think I was in a foggy haze of changing diapers, BFing, and rocking babies to sleep for like the first 2 weeks. That's when we started using the bouncers. Or I should say "I" started using them. When I was taking care of them on my own during the night when they were waking every 2 to 4 hours, I'd BF the first one and then put her in her bouncy seat. Then I'd wake the other baby, change her and BF her while the first baby dozed off. Then I'd rock the second baby after BFing her and put her to bed and then put the first baby to bed, sometimes after a little bit of rocking. The bouncy seats were a life saver. My babies now STTN, like once a week one of them will wake randomly in the middle of the night and I just BF her and put her back to bed without waking the other baby. But when they were up all night long, using the bouncy seats cut down my wake time by a good 30 minutes. I'll admit that once in a while, I was so exhausted, I'd put the second baby in her bouncy after feeding her and I'd let them both sleep there until the next feeding, just so I could get a few more minutes of sleep. I'd just sleep on the couch with them on the floor next to me. They didn't necessarily sleep longer in the bouncy seats but not having to rock them saved time.
My DH drives all day for work so he has to get sleep or else he's putting himself and other people in danger. But having said that, there were a few nights when it was just too hard for me to deal wit both babies on my own and I'd wake DH up to help with a feeding. He appreciated the fact that he got a full nights sleep every night so he gladly helped out on those random occasions since it helped me keep my sanity. I would discuss this with your DH and if it's possible, I hope he will tell you he can help out once in a while on a night when you REALLY need it.
Good luck! Try not to stress too much. It will all work out. People ask me and DH all the time "How do you handle a toddler and twin newborns?" And my answer always was (and still is!), "We just do." There's no "how", it's our life now and it's not something we're just trying to handle, we have to make it work. Sure, we were in survival mode for the first month or so but now we've got our groove. You'll get yours too!
My girls were also born at 37 weeks and we have just started turning a corner for longer nighttime feeds - so the good news is it's about to get easier.
It was definitely taking us an hour and half of nursing, changing, getting back to sleep and now we are down to about 30 min. I did give up nursing during the night b/c a bottle was just so much faster - you could still pump but that will keep you up longer.
Also do you have anyone who could help you in the morning or could you hire someone? My mom would come over and watch the babies after their first morning feed and I could pretty easily get back to sleep. I felt much better waking up around 10 a.m.