My Little Ladies: Twin life Part 1

Now that the girls are almost 7 months old, I've had some time to reflect on what worked for us and things we could have done differently. I swear, the first few months of having twins was easy! Everyone would probably want to slap me in the face for saying that, but my babies were very cooperative with what I wanted them to do. As we approached the 5-6 month mark things started to change. They started teething and it affected their sleep...which in turn affected my sleep! I never minded getting up with them 3 times (or more) a night in the beginning. They started sleeping 10-12 hours a night around 3.5 months. During their sleep regression, even getting up once a night made me feel exhausted the next day. They also never napped at the same time during the day, so I was constantly in "on" mode. Things are slowly getting back on track and my little ladies are napping in their cribs as we speak.

So what makes this twin life work? Here's a few things:

* Same feeding schedule: When one eats, the other eats. I lay one baby on my lap and the other next to me, plop those bottles in and feed away. When they are both finished I burp one and change her diaper. When the other finishes I burp and change her. The whole process usually takes around 20 mins.

* Night Sleep: Sleeping has been a work in progress, as I assume it is in most families. We set the environment- "train ride" app on as loud as the Ipad allows, ceiling fan and floor fan on, Merlin Magic Sleepsuit, and room darkening shades. At night we do man on man coverage. We each put the girls in their sleepsuits, feed them and put them in their cribs. I always insisted the girls sleep in their cribs, because I thought the transition of a bassinet or rock n play was unnecessary and I didn't want to have to fight that battle. We try to rock the girls and shh them until they are drowsy, but not completely asleep. It was important to us that they both knew how to comfort themselves to sleep so that if they woke up in the middle of the night it wasn't always necessary to cry for mom or dad to come rock them to sleep.

* Day Sleep: Still working on this one! I am trying to get them on a real nap schedule instead of just letting them fall asleep whenever. They have started waking up around 6am each morning. Pretty early, but that's ok with me. I am just happy that they are showing some sign of having a regular wake up time. My plan is to put one in her bed (my short napper) and the other in the swing downstairs two hours after wake up. I want to separate them because one may have a harder time falling asleep or she may wake up early and wake up the other. I would like to establish one afternoon nap 2-3 hours after the morning nap and so far this week I have been successful in doing that. I also want to limit naps to 1-1.5 hours. One baby would sleep all day if I let her!

Of course we don't have everything figured out and when we feel like we do, the babies throw a curve ball at us. I intend to write more parts of this "Twin Life" whenever I get a moment to myself, which if nap time keeps going well, will hopefully be soon!