Eating/Sleeping schedule-what do you do? And other questions!

Journey33 · November 2012

hi all

Just curious what everyone does to keep a feeding/sleeping schedule for your multiples. My LOs are 8 weeks-3 weeks adjusted. We're not waking to feed every 3 hours anymore but we are going by the "one up, both up" rule to try and keep our sanity. The problem is if one gets up to eat, and the other is not ready just yet, the feeding is often difficult-taking longer than it would if we waited until she was ready.

Also, I feel like we'll never know just how long the other twin would sleep because we're always waking someone to eat...

How long is this even an issue for? Im guessing once they start having regular meals?

Finally, do your fraternal twins eat/sleep on the same schedule later in life? The periods of wakefulness are very different for my girls and I wonder it they'll ever be awake and asleep at the same time.

How do you all handle it?

AmyJoy728 · November 2012

I don't wake the other anymore, but do feed both at same time. So if only one awake because of a short nap, I wait until he starts showing hunger signs and then wake up the other. Usually #1 will fall asleep while eating for a 10 mins and then they end up back on schedule.

I didn't worry about finding out how long the baby would have slept, my goal was to keep on same sched.

CourtneySue · November 2012

Once they were on only 1 night feed I shortened they day feeds to 2.5 to 3max in between. I sometimes wake both up even. The shorter time frame helps if someone is just not as hungry, but they sunk up fast. They now get 7 feeds in a day but their last feed is at 9:30pm and sleep till 6am

xoexpat · November 2012

I know it is so tempting to just let one sleep! /the times I have done that, though, just didn't work out for me--they ended up staggered so that I was pretty much feeding every 45 minutes or hour.

At night: I usually go to sleep around 10 after babies eat and they will wake up at 1, 4, 7. They are pretty hungry still. What works for me is to let one baby wake me up to feed, feed him, change him, then wake up other baby, change her, then feed her so that when she's done we can just go right back to sleep (we co-sleep).

ETA: during the day I've noticed babies getting more impatient--I used to be able to feed one and keep the other one occupied with a paci until I was ready, but now when they're hungry they will just scream. So they are starting to synchronize and do not like waiting.

laraashleyt · November 2012

I tried not waking one up as well one time....and that did not work out for me either. My twins are pretty much still on a 3 hour feeding schedule. They have gone 4 1/2 hours a couple nights now, but as soon as one cries, I wake the other up and change, then feed both. I can't wait till they skip a feeding at night!!!

babycasalins · November 2012

I had these same questions and I asked my PEDI. He suggested I wake the sleepy one and feed her. You can sleep feed.. I always thought "how am I going to feed her if she isn't hungry" well with very little stimulation she opened right up and ate right along side her sister.

My fraternal girls sleep schedule is sort of similar. They are 11 weeks and we're dealing with "TRYING" to get them both to bed at the same time. Napping isn't an issue it's actual BED TIME. I have one that LOVES to sleep and another that is a lighter sleeper, so I feel your pain..

I hear "consistency is key" so keep up the good work! I know how hard it is and we moms of multiples are super hard on ourselves!

MrsLnt · November 2012

We always woke to feed during the day. By 2ish weeks old, we had them on a regular enough schedule that we could set feeding times. They ate every 3.5 hours and got bottles at 6a, 9:30a, 1p, 4:30p, 7:30p, 11p and 2:30a. I'm of the school of thought of waking to feed during the day, to make sure they get as many calories as possible, to work on stretching out night sleep.

I know on demand feeding is possible with twins but it didn't work for my personality. I needed some semblance of structure and predictability for our days. At 11w 3d they stopped the middle of the night feeding (8w adjusted) but we kept the 11pm dreamfeed until nearly 7 months old.

At 2 years old, mine still eat and sleep together. They don't fall asleep at the same time and they don't wake up at the same time, but they go to bed and take naps at the same time and always have. We have set mealtimes and snacktimes. It's limited our flexibility some, but the tradeoff is we have an enormous amount of predictability and that's worth a lot for me.

Newborns, especially once they get past their due date, are just not going to sleep predictably and that's frustrating. Keep trying to put them down for naps around the same time and they may not sleep as much as each other but it does give you a little break, hopefully.

Hang in there! It gets easier. As I type this, I've got one on each side of me on the couch, snacking on some popcorn while we watch Blue's Clues. Once you get through the rough parts of infancy, twins are the BEST.

myheromyworld89 · November 2012

I had the exact same issues with mine. I wish I could remember exactly HOW it got better (I must have been half asleep through those first 2 months) but I feel like they just kind of regulated them selves out on their own around 2 months or so. The only thing that I can think of that we did differently was at our 2 month Dr appt the Dr said we really needed to start getting them used to sleeping in their cribs at least for nap time (they were still in our room in separate pack n plays, I was really paranoid about putting them in their rooms) Finally that night DH convinced me to just try it for the night (we have separate nursery's). They both slept for 7 hours straight. From that point to 3 months they would sleep between 5 and 7 hours a night before waking up. And at 3 months it was litterally overnight they started sleeping between 8 and 10 hours. On a really good night, 11 or 12 even.

My DD is the one that typically wakes up first and always has. Right now for instance she'll normally sleep about 8 hours. I let her fuss for a couple minutes before going to get her to see if she'll go back to sleep. But she normally doesn't so I'll bring her down stairs and put her in her swing with her paci (I don't feed her yet), flip on the Disney Junior channel and I go back to sleep for a couple more hours until DS gets up. She just lays there and naps or watches TV lol. Then when he gets up I'll feed them both. Occasionally he'll get up first and she'll sleep in but we end up doing the exact same thing. During the day we eat every 4 hours. We've been doing that since around 1 month.

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Eating/Sleeping schedule-what do you do? And other questions!

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