Sleep Training for 6 Month Old Twins--One Month In (read sleep background in previous post first)

Or I could title this:

How sleep training changed my life and possibly saved my sanity and marriage.

These are notes from the sleep log I started when we did Weissbluth's CIO sleep training. I kept very careful notes to document any patterns and adjust times if needed:

• The twins were exactly 5 months old (4 months adjusted). They sleep in cribs next to each other (in an "L" shaped formation in our room.
• We hung a dark piece of fabric up (so ghetto!) over our roll shade as the room wasn't dark enough. BUT, we did not want to do black out shades as I've heard from too many moms that now there kids won't sleep unless it's pitch black in the room. The last thing we want is to be bringing black garbage bags and masking tape when we go someone else's house!
• We found that moving up the time we put them down to sleep helped greatly. We never realized we were putting them to bed too late and that they wouldn't wake any earlier from us putting them to sleep earlier. We experimented with the timing, but the sleep notes helped me to see what was their optimal time.
• We also started a very strict bedtime routine. I can't stress how important this is and what a difference this made.

Our Bedtime Routine:

• Classical music and chill play time for 30 minutes prior to going to bed--no exersaucers, no jumperoos, no bouncy seats with crazy lights. Low stimulation.
• Bath
• Dried off and lotion baby massage on our bed in very dark bedroom, just enough light coming in from window to still read a book, no lights on
• Warm BM bottles ready at the bedside
• Cradle hold baby while propped up in bed, taking turns reading books (We kept the same 3-4 books, but might change them up after awhile. For now, we wanted repetition for everything).
• Burp and cuddle baby
• Pull shade completely
• Put baby in crib
• Sing a song--same song every night (because the cribs are in an L shape, if I put them down at the closet points together, I can still reach in and hold both their hands or rub their heads, backs, etc while I sing to them.)
• Tell them I love them, night night.
• Leave the room.

Night One--Total time crying: 45 minutes (on and off, not constant)

6pm down

10 minutes babbling from both, followed by slight crying from both

After all was quiet from Grunter, Whoop Whoop escalated the crying

W2's crying went up and down like a swing, when all was quiet at 6:40.

I breathed a sigh of relief, followed by a grimace as he started up again.

But then all was quiet at 6:45 for the rest of the night.

10pm, woke up for dream feed, went immediately back to sleep, no fussing

2:30am, woke to nurse, went immediately back to sleep, no fussing

6am, woke to nurse, went immediately back to sleep at 6:30am, no fussing

8am, woke up to nurse and up for the day

Night Two--Total time crying: 40 minutes (on and off, not constant)

5:40 down

10 minutes babble, then quiet Grunter and crying W2

W2 again goes up and down with the crying

6:25 all goes completely quiet.

10pm, woke up for dream feed, went immediately back to sleep, no fussing

3am, woke to nurse, went immediately back to sleep, no fussing

4:57am, W2 woke up. Decided to let him fuss a bit and see if he'd get himself back to sleep

13 minutes later all is quiet

5:57am, Grunter wakes up with a poopy diaper, won't be soothed so I wake up W2 and nurse both of them.

6:30am, they both go back to sleep until 8am, no fuss, up for the day at 8am

9am, nursing

Night Three--Total time crying: 20 minutes (on and off, not constant)

6:50 down

Not a sound from Grunter

10 minutes of babbling from W2

7pm, slight crying from W2, followed by 5 minutes of silence

7:07, slight crying again from W2

7:10, all quiet for the night

Night Four--Total Time Crying: 10 minutes

6:35 down, drowsy but awake

No sound from either

6:44 slight fussing from W2

6:47 both crying/whining

6:55, all quiet for the night

Night Five--Total Time Fussing: 20 minutes but no REAL crying

6:08 Down, quiet babbling from both

6:22, slight crying/whining from W2

6:25, heavier from W2 but still not crying

6:27, babbling W2

6:28 All Quiet for the night

Night Six--No Crying

6:20 Fell asleep during their bottles

Transferred to cribs and never woke up

All Quiet for the night

Night Seven--Total Time Crying: 45 minutes

6:00 Down, naps were really messed up that day and babies are super fussy

Overly tired W2 wails for 45 minutes then conks out

Grunter sleeps through everything

Horrible Session, but yeah for Grunter--he's got it.

Night Eight--Total Time Fussing/Crying: 18 minutes

6pm Down

6-6:05pm Babbling from both

Grunter falls asleep

6:05-6:14 Babbling from W2

6:15-6:18 Crying from W2

6:19 All Quiet

****For the first 8 nights we still did a bit (minute or two) of rocking/swaying/soothing. Starting night 10 we simply put them in their cribs***

Night Nine--No Crying

6:13 Down, drowsy but awake

No rocking, swaying, just a bath, bottle, book and song--kiss kiss night night

10 Minutes light babbling from Grunter

6:23 All Quiet for the night

Night Ten--Total Time Crying: 20-30 on and off

5:40 Down

Took too long for W2 to burp and he got cranky. Was already fussy since he'd been up since 3:45

No crying from Grunter

W2 cried on and off for 20-30 minutes

6:10 All Quiet

Night Eleven--No Crying

5:40 Down

5:40-6pm, Both are babbling

6pm, very slight crying from W2 for 1-2 minutes

6:10 All Quiet

Night Twelve--No Crying

6:10pm Down, Grunter is asleep

6:15, W2 babbling

6:25 All Quiet

Night Thirteen--Total Time Fussing: 20 minutes

5:25 Down, slight crying from W2

5:30 Babbling from both

5:40-6pm, on and off crying/fussing

6pm All Quiet

Night Fourteen--No Crying

5:30 Down

W2 had fallen asleep in arms during bottle

All Quiet

I have notes for the entire month, but I think you get the idea.

Basically, Grunter got it really fast and is a super sleeper and W2 took a lot longer. Grunter is a really deep sleeper and W2 is much lighter.

Also, we saw a pattern develop: W2 is a real people person, he hates to be alone. The babies would go to sleep at the same time and babble to each other for a good 5-10 minutes. Then Grunter would fall asleep and Bam! W2 would then start crying! It's like he's saying "Hey?! Where did my babble buddy go?!"

We also learned after 2 weeks that 6pm was really too late for their bedtime. We pushed it back to 5:30-5:45 and had much less crying.

In fact, for the rest of the month, most nights were no crying--perhaps some babbling/fussing, but no real crying and that's what we are finding true to this day.

In fact, now almost 1.5 months later, we can put them in their cribs and they smile at us, but they don't fuss or cry when we leave the room.

They rarely fuss at all during the night, waking only to feed and we put them right back down when they are done eating.

If we do have fussing in the middle of the night, unless it's eating time--we DO NOT go get them. If the fussing turns into full blown crying, we go check the diaper situation. If that's OK, we let them CIO for 5-10/15 minutes. IF they are still crying then, we go ahead and pick them up and try to settle them. Usually this works. It's the secret world of babies, so you just have to take it night by night.

Also key is to not turn on any lights at night. We only have a small night light we turn on for diaper changes and quickly turn back off again. There are no toys, no talking, in fact we try to not even make eye contact! If we do, they start to smile and want to play! It's night time boys, only for sleeping.

They sleep until 6am-6:30am. IF we had them in their own room, I'm pretty sure we could let them amuse themselves until 7am. However, since they are right beside us, once they are awake it's not like we're getting any more sleep with their chattering, so we might as well get up and start the day.

Questions? I hope this helps!

I can't stress what a difference this has made. Yes, the crying was tough in the beginning, but I just had to remind myself that W2 could cry up to 2 hours IN MY ARMS before and he has never cried that long doing CIO.

We have our evenings back.

We have cooked dinner almost every night which we love plus, it saves us money.

We can MAKE PLANS to do something (one of us) while the other one stays home.

We can watch a movie.

We can have a date night because all the nanny has to do is come on over!

It's great. Super freaking fantastic and I am SO glad we did this.

Next UP: Nap Training!!

Sleep Training--Some Background

Background Information:

The twins have been sleeping in their cribs since the day they came home from the hospital at 5 days old. We have always done our best to keep them in the cribs for nap time as well as night time. Of course this wasn't always possible and I have no idea how many times we let them nap on us or nap on the double breastfeeding pillow, but every night, without fail, they slept in their cribs.

All sleep books were considered and we looked into every method. The 'put them to sleep drowsy but awake', stand or sit by them and pat their backs (Ha! My babies would writhe away and scream in anger that YOU.ARE.NOT.PICKING.ME.UP!), etc, etc. Nothing worked. And we took the "you should never let a small baby cry" very seriously. In hindsight, maybe too seriously. As twins with both moms home, in a small one bedroom apartment, sleeping in cribs right beside us--they NEVER had to cry for more than a minute or two. They demanded. We responded. Fast. For four months +.

We tried everything possible to get them to sleep and over time we found the only thing that worked for us was to become human bouncy balls, rockers, swayers, soothers, shushers and pray-ers. We dreaded night time. Getting them to sleep for night time could take up to 2 hours. For nap time, it was easily an hour and that's 3 naps a day! So you do the math: we were spending up to 5 hours a day just trying to get them to sleep.

It was never easy. The baby had to fall asleep completely in our arms and then we had to try to get that baby from our arms into the crib without waking up. That rarely worked and we would try multiple times before maybe, finally our efforts were met with success. I became someone who pleaded with the baby and prayed to Gods I don't even really believe in.

Whoop Whoop was the worst. Plus, he was colicky. Chicken and I would employ a 'take turns' approach, because one can only bounce on a yoga ball for so long without going bat shit crazy.

Grunter was better, but only marginally. However, we could usually get him to sleep first and then concentrate on W2. Over time, Grunter learned to sleep through W2's crying. And let me tell you, that boy could cry and cry and cry. There were nights he would cry for up to 2 hours, while he was being 'soothed' and bounced in our arms.

We had decided to try the Ferber sleep method first (and hopefully last) when we got back from Argentina (at 4.5 months). This is a method where you put the baby down drowsy but awake and go in to check and comfort the baby in increments of 5-10-15 minutes, etc.

We couldn't even take that and did it in increments of 3-6-9. All it did was piss them off that we weren't picking them up (you are supposed to comfort them in the crib quickly and walk away) and they kept crying. All we got out of it was knowing we had 3-6-9-12 minutes to get things done--like prepare dinner.

After 30 minutes of non-stop crying you are supposed to go in and do whatever it takes to get the baby to sleep. So, you guessed it, it was back to rocking/swaying/bouncing, etc. The only difference was that it was faster this time around as they had exhausted themselves from crying so long. It felt HORRIBLE and many times I cried right along with them. I hated it. We tried this method almost 2 weeks.

Most sleep training (CIO-cry it out) suggests that you not start before four months of age as a baby is not able to self soothe before this point. For us, that meant five months. I have no shame in saying that we were counting the days down until we could do this.

It just so happened that on their five month birthday (June 21), Chicken had to be out of town and I was left on my own for my first ever overnight.

Faced with trying to rock/bounce/sway two babies at the same time, I decided it was time to do the Weissbluth CIO that very evening. I soothed them as best as I could and then went to take a shower.

Yes. You read that right. They had been fed. They were clean. They were dry. And they were safe in their cribs. I closed the door, turned on the water and took the longest shower I'd had since before they were born. I couldn't hear a thing and I was OK with that. They were OK, too.

I still ended up going back in to comfort them once I got out of the shower, but they fell asleep much quicker than ever before.

The next night, when Chicken came home, I told her in no uncertain terms that for our sanity, we had to start CIO. She had been very resistant and I wouldn't take no for an answer. She agreed quite quickly when I told her of my partial success the night before and that very evening we started CIO.

I want to stress that our version of CIO was NOT to get them to sleep through the night. They were still too small weight-wise to do that and we had no problem with their 10pm and 2am feeds.

We were simply looking for a method to get them to sleep, learn self soothing techniques and become better sleepers in the long run.

We were also looking to save our sanity and our marriage!

Next UP: Sleep Training 101 Notes