suggestions to help STTN or just sleep a little better?

mpstochlinski8 · August 2012

Im not going to use CIO with my twins so Im just curious what else there is to help them learn to get to sleep on their own? I sleep in the nursery and there are many times during the night one or the other will bedshare and nurse back to sleep. We just don't have the room to co sleep in our room so this is the best I can do. My LOs are almost 10mths old and still are up at least 2-3x a night. I really don't mind taking care of their middle of the night needs however Im also really getting tired of running on empty. Since alot of times their up at the same time its hard to rock them back to sleep if nursing doesn't help in which case I resort to a bottle and they usually doze off then. If their crying and I can't hold them both DH will come help otherwise Im on my own at night.

Our bedtime routine is usually nurse, supplement with bottle, hold them til they fall alseep if they didn't fall alseep eating then they are in their own cribs. I don't mind this at all, I know it will be tough once we ween them off the bottles though. I think the tough part of this is they just don't know how to sleep on their own so when they wake up at night they cry. I know there may be reasons like hunger, wet diaper, just wanting to be held or nurse which is all fine but I'd like to help them learn to fall asleep on their own if they don't really need anything. I think if there was just one LO maybe it would all be less challenging, I'd probably just bedshare and life may be more simple but no where near as wonderful LOL I do love having twins but Im finding each challenge is magnified for me. any help or tips on helping LOs learn to sleep better is welcome , thank you

tokenhoser · August 2012

I'd look at "The No Cry Sleep Solution" and The Sleep Lady Shuffle for some new ideas. I would also separate "cry it out" from "my baby must never ever cry". The thing is that THEY are happy how things are. You're not. So if you want to change it up a bit, they may let you know they're not fans of change. That's okay. Crying with comfort (just possibly without a boob/bottle) is not CIO.

00jennifer00 · August 2012

Will they rock/pat to sleep? I'm nightweaning my 19mo right now (morning sickness killed my plan to nw a month ago). I've done the same with all of mine, I will try to end the earliest waking first (which is usually like 11pm here) and pat/rock back to sleep. Once we get that one gone and they stop waking then, we'll move onto the next feed. Often times, they'll just start sttn after we get through dropping the first two feeds. With two though, I can imagine how hard that is! Can your dh help you at night for a while if the babies will tolerate it? I know my 19mo would NOT tolerate dh trying to rock/pat her and it would just make it worse though. I hope it passes quickly for you. It usually takes me a couple of weeks to work through it all. You have to do what is comfortable for you, and anything less than patting/rocking is not ok for me.

Temp123197812503460 · August 2012

No real advice, mostly commiseration, I have twins also and I know how 2-3 wakings per baby quickly turns into nights where you don't get more than a 2 hr stretch if that!My babies are a bit older than yours and I will say that without too much intervention they have been making slow progress towards sleeping better. It's not every night for sure, but it's no longer super rare to have a night with one waking for one and two for the other.We did a bit of CIO light for first going to sleep around 8 months, but that was more because they were taking an hour + to fall asleep and it didn't really do much for night wakings.

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