I’m just going to lay it all out on the line: I have never in my entire life been as tired as I’ve been during the first few months of being the mom of twins! They say there is nothing that can really prepare you for having a baby. Well, there’s nothing that can really prepare you for having twins, even if you’ve had a newborn before!
One of the few times both babies have fallen asleep in my arms together!
At 13 weeks the Hopscotch twins are still only going 4-5 hour stretches in between feedings. While this is a vast improvement over eating every two hours from the early, early days, this schedule is incredibly rough now that I am back at work. With Miss H I never felt the mind numbing tiredness after my maternity leave ended because right at 12 weeks Miss H started sleeping from 7pm-7am without waking up. It was amazing! And it happened without me doing anything other than giving Miss H a loose routine and nursing on demand. No dream feeds, strategically timed early evening naps, or pacifiers. We didn’t even own a rock-n-play!
Now that I’m in a position where I’m tackling twins, a toddler and work, I’d fork over a lot of cash to anyone who could make that type of infant sleep happen in my household again.
Right now our schedule goes a little something like this:
7:00pm: Twins sleep in swings
7:30pm: Miss H is (hopefully) in bed for the night
Between 8:30pm-10:00pm: Twins each get a bottle, swaddled, and placed in their cribs. Timing depends on either one or both of them waking up from their early evening nap or when the clock hits 10:00pm…whichever comes first.
Between 1:30am-3:00am: One or both of the twins wake up for a bottle. It is usually roughly 4-5 hours after the last bottle, and if only one twin wakes up we have been waking the other up to eat so that they stay on the same schedule. I tackle this feeding.
Between 5:00am-6:00am: One or both of the twins wake up for a bottle. As per earlier feeding, we try and feed both at this time. Mr. H tackles this feeding while I get ready for work. After this feeding the babies will usually sleep until around 8:00am.
Is it a terrible schedule? No, not compared to what it was when they were younger! However, I may only get roughly 4 hours of continuous sleep then another hour or two before I’m up for the day. It’s pretty exhausting. I’m contemplating not waking up the sleeping twin at feedings in order to test the waters and see just how long the sleeping twin will really sleep (and I say “the sleeping twin” because Miss Hop and Mr. Hop take turns on who wakes up first in the middle of the night!).
To help myself feel more positive about their sleep habits, this morning a made a little list of everything that is going really well with their sleep:
- At 11 weeks they both transferred almost seamlessly from sleeping in Rock-n-Plays (RNPs) at night to sleeping (swaddled) in their cribs. I was worried they would be sleeping in the RNPs for a couple more months, partly because I was nervous about not having an easy way to rock them both to sleep. They proved me wrong!
- The twins put themselves to sleep when we put them to bed at night and after their middle of the night feeding. No extreme rocking or shushing or pacifiers. Most nights we simply place them in their cribs (after bottle and burping) and leave the room. Sometimes they seem to fall asleep almost immediately, other times they may lightly fuss for a minute or two, but ultimately they fall asleep without our help. This is HUGE to me because self soothing can be such a difficult skill to learn!
- Miracle Blankets work really well with the twins; they will sometimes fight it a little bit but once we have them wrapped up they calm down almost immediately.
- They don’t wake each other up (yet). With twins you can’t control what they do and how loud they choose to be! Fortunately most of the time when one wakes up and fusses the other barely stirs in his/her crib.
- Neither one of them poops in the middle of the night! That may seem silly, but generally their diapers are only wet and don’t seem to bother them, so if they’re pretty sleeping at a feeding I generally won’t change them. If it were poop, well, that would be a different story.
This list helps me remember that they are still rock stars when it comes to sleep, even if they still are waking up during the night, and that we are moving in the right direction with everything we’re doing. It also reminds me that this isn’t a forever thing. Sleep will come eventually – I will soon get some of my sleep back and eventually will have time again in the evenings to regularly exercise, sew, fold laundry, etc.
How do you stay positive in the midst of major sleep deprivation?
blogger / pomelo / 5361 posts
Hang in there, mama! As another twin mama told me, mostly she feels like having twins isn’t that different than having two singletons (she has 4 kids total), BUT the two areas that are way harder are sleep and discipline. Sleep was a living nightmare for us for a while, and all I can say is that it will get better eventually!
I’m terrible on low sleep, so I’m not sure I ever manage to “stay positive” in the middle of sleep deprivation!
ETA: Oh, and I cannot stress enough how awesome car naps were during my lunch break!
blogger / coconut / 8306 posts
I can function on little sleep, so getting 4-5 hours a night myself was never the hard part. The hard part was your schedule, which Charlotte was on for awhile! It was the getting 4-5 hours, then two more then being up for the day. Granted, I didn’t have three kids to work with – but I did start staying up for the day at 4am, and realized that I felt more refreshed if I got a full 5 hours of sleep than if I got 5 hours of sleep then two more hours after that. It was the two hour “nap” that killed me! She’s almost 5 months and she’s been sleeping until 6:30-7 the last few weeks, so it eventually worked itself out.
Hang in there mama!
guest
I have twins that turned 4 months old Tuesday. It as if I was writing this blog post. it was so nice to hear we are not alone in the sleep struggles. Thanks for writing this!
pomelo / 5041 posts
This is exactly a part of having twins I don’t look forward to but it’s really helpful to know what has worked for you. Thanks for sharing!
pomegranate / 3643 posts
My seven month old is on this exact schedule! My toddler didn’t STN until around 13mo.
kiwi / 558 posts
No advice, but just wanted to say that I love seeing pics of your twins! Also, you look great!! Hang in there!
kiwi / 643 posts
Oh, Mama!
It WILL get easier. You will be the last one to notice it, but suddenly you will look back and realize that life gets better each month.
It’s OKAY to NOT enjoy every moment of your life with newborn twins. Because, well, yeah….two babies. YOU may end up with regrets, but I promise the babies won’t. As long as they are happy and are loved, those regrets will always be just yours. Twins are a different ball game, and you can’t do it all the same way you would with a singleton. This is YOUR story –which is still very much a love story–and it’s okay that the plot is complicated!
You get a lot of free passes with twins, for a very good reason.
It gets better!
Promise.
GOLD / apricot / 341 posts
You’re amazing to handle two newborns and then function at work all day! I don’t know how that is even possible. If misery loves company maybe this will cheer you up: my 8 month old “sleeps” (usually wakes up at least 3 times in those early hours) from 6.30ish to 10pm in er crib and then spends the rest of the night in bed with me. On a good night she’ll just wake me to nurse 3 or 4 times during the rest of the night. But on a bad night (hello 8 month sleep regression), she nurses constantly and even spends a couple of hours away and chatty, kicking me in the face and stomach. Good times. We have a 4 year old and a 2.5 year old also but neither of them were anything like this. They’re all different and it sounds like your twins are pretty great sleepers, all things considered. Stay strong – you’re doing great!
guest
Love ur blog entries. Been following your story.
honeydew / 7968 posts
My twins sleep thru the cries. So great! My singleton wakes up over any noise, ugh. I can’t even remember how bad it was w the twins. Because I think it’s just as hard w this lo, lol.
apricot / 403 posts
My twins are 5 months old and have Just started having a few good nights. They were down to one motn feed and recently have stopped waking up for a bottle at all!
Good luck mama. Like others have said.. It does get better. (hope I didn’t just jinx myself!)
pomegranate / 3053 posts
Make sure I drink and eat enough to keep up my energy, especially with drinking enough water. And, btw, love the picture! So sweet!
apricot / 343 posts
I remember the early twin days all too well and don’t envy you! Something that worked really well for us around that time was that we each handled one baby’s feedings for the night and wore earplugs. The earplugs help drown out all the extra noise but you will hear crying easily. Then DH would only get up with Baby A all night and I would get up with Baby B. Around that 2-3 month time they would each do longer stretches, but not in a coordinated way, and it began to be impossible to get the one we’d woken up to eat if he didn’t feel like it! Then each night we would switch who took which baby. Somewhere I have it written down but don’t like looking at it much…but if I remember correctly, one baby would do a 5-6 hour stretch at the start of the night and the other at the end. So one would sleep like 8:30-3:00 or so, and then wake again at 5 or 6, and the other would sleep maybe 8:30-11 but then not wake again until 5 or 6. So it definitely helped us get in longer stretches! Good luck. The newborn phase will end, it really will. And don’t listen to people who tell you it doesn’t get easier, it just gets different…it definitely gets easier.
eggplant / 11408 posts
You’re doing so well, Mama! I don’t have twins, but my 9 month old hates sleep. Most nights, we’re still up 1-3 times a night, and it is really exhausting. Somehow, though, it’s gotten easier, even though I don’t know when or how that happened. Here’s to hoping you get some sleep tonight!
blogger / persimmon / 1220 posts
Hang in there!!! They are beautiful, btw!
persimmon / 1420 posts
As I’ve taken to saying to all twin parents, “It gets easier, it gets better, I promise!!” My kiddos are 2, and I still vividly remember how excruciatingly awful those first few months are. I got 45 minutes of sleep one night, and I thought I was going to die. Now, they sleep all night and are wake up to play with each other. You’ll get there (soon, I hope)!