One up both up

radiant05 · August 2013

I've been tandem breastfeeding my 6wk twin girls since birth with the "one up, both up" philosophy both day and night. I'm noticing lately that sometimes the one I'm waking doesn't really want to wake up yet and doesn't really get a great feed.

Do you think it's beneficial in terms of sleep (for me and dh) and consistency of schedule to keep with the one up, both up or should I just wait it out until the babies wake?

What are your experiences?

yinyang124 · August 2013

At 6 weeks, I would still stick with one up both up. Maybe test it out, if you're really curious. I did stop one up both up around 3-4 months though because at that point it was very clear that one of my babies slept a lot better than the other.

Edited*

Rynleigh · August 2013

I did one-up, other one up in 15 minutes LOL

They've kept a similar schedule since birth - we always ended up with James waking just about 10-15min after Simon, and now the delay can vary by a whole hour sometimes, but for the most part they sleep on the same schedule. I think it's a good idea to keep it synchronized as best you can because if you let them fall into opposite schedules, you'll never have time that isn't occupied with diapers/feeds/cuddling... but the *slight* delay of a good 15 minutes helps with getting one diaper done at a time or one bath done at a time or one nearly done eating and ready to sleep by the time your other one wakes.

HattieDornbush · August 2013

Everyone told me to do one up both up. I stopped around two months because my dd would sleep for a six hour stretch if I didn't wake her when ds woke up to nurse.

raraavis28 · August 2013

OUBU worked well for us, especially when they were still getting up at night. Granted, my LOs are usually pretty in sync with each other; the few random times we tried letting one baby sleep longer, he was usually up within about 20 minutes so we figured it just made sense to keep both babies on the same schedule. Now our system is probably better described as "one down both down" and "one eat both eat" as I focus on that for scheduling purposes, and sometimes give one baby a little leeway on waking up (up to about 20 minutes) if he needs a longer nap.

With any schedule or "system" you will definitely have the random days when it doesn't seem to work with what the babies are doing. What you need to ask yourself is if OUBU seems to be effective overall or if it is more of a hassle than a help. If the former, then stick with it even with the tricky days, but if it's more like the latter, it would probably be better to find a different system. As great as consistency is, there is also plenty of room for experimentation and figuring out what works for you and your LOs....and what works for some mamas might not work for you and vice versa. GL!

Ruthie04 · August 2013

We did it to 4 mos when the pedi gave us the go ahead to stop waking them to eat. DS1 STTN right away and DS2 took a couple of weeks to do the same. I still keep them on the same eating schedule and, if one sleeps more than an hour longer than the other, I will wake that baby to eat with his brother. They are 10 mos.

nuttycoconut · August 2013

I did one up both up during the day and most nights but then experimented a little bit here and there by not waking the other to see if they would sttn. Sometimes they would, sometimes I'd be up an hour later. I deliberated over this for weeks! My pedi recommended I let the other baby sleep but some nights I needed sleep SO badly and ended up doing OUBU.

Maybe you can try it out on the weekends once in a while to see what happens? My twins didn't start sleeping through the night until about a week ago.

megs2011 · August 2013

We did OUBU in the beginning because I would have been constantly feeding, changing, pumping with no breaks since my girls took 45 mins to eat a bottle. Once I started nursing, I would tandem nurse them. They are pretty much in sync for the most part. They are now 10mos and we haven't done OUBU in a couple months since they started STTN.

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