If you talk to the parents of a young infant, invariably the topic of sleep will come up. Most often, it will be about how much (or really, how little) sleep the parents are getting, and this is of course tied to how well the baby sleeps. In our case, there are two little angels' sleep habits to consider.
Silas and Zoe have been napping in their crib since the beginning of December, and they started sleeping overnight there a few weeks ago. As if overnights with two babies weren't hard enough, ours are further complicated by the fact that Derek works 11:3opm-7:30am. For this reason, I think we were blessed with good sleepers. By mid-November, S&Z dropped one of their overnight feedings. We have hung steady with one night feeding since then, but it has progressively gotten later and later into the wee morning hours. At the same time, I have moved up the babies' bedtime such that they now go down around 9pm. They are now consistently sleeping for SEVEN hours at a time, and they aren't even 3 months old yet (says the proud Momma!)! They get up sometime between 4 and 5:30am to eat, and then go back to sleep until about 7:30am when they get up for the day. Woo. Hoo.
Silas and Zoe also nap for a solid 4 hours every afternoon (although they get up to eat in the middle of the nap). This allows me to get a lot of stuff done around the house, like work on the baby books, write thank you notes, download the day's pictures from the camera, work on the blog, update Facebook, do laundry, get the next day's bottles ready, or prep for dinner. Or all of the above -- I am very efficient these days (and will be even more so once I'm back to work)! Zoe is a much better napper at other times of day than Silas, but more on that later.
The best part is how happy they are when they wake up from a good sleep! This is a transition that has happened gradually, but it's definitely one of my favorite parts of the day!
Silas and Zoe have been napping in their crib since the beginning of December, and they started sleeping overnight there a few weeks ago. As if overnights with two babies weren't hard enough, ours are further complicated by the fact that Derek works 11:3opm-7:30am. For this reason, I think we were blessed with good sleepers. By mid-November, S&Z dropped one of their overnight feedings. We have hung steady with one night feeding since then, but it has progressively gotten later and later into the wee morning hours. At the same time, I have moved up the babies' bedtime such that they now go down around 9pm. They are now consistently sleeping for SEVEN hours at a time, and they aren't even 3 months old yet (says the proud Momma!)! They get up sometime between 4 and 5:30am to eat, and then go back to sleep until about 7:30am when they get up for the day. Woo. Hoo.
Silas and Zoe also nap for a solid 4 hours every afternoon (although they get up to eat in the middle of the nap). This allows me to get a lot of stuff done around the house, like work on the baby books, write thank you notes, download the day's pictures from the camera, work on the blog, update Facebook, do laundry, get the next day's bottles ready, or prep for dinner. Or all of the above -- I am very efficient these days (and will be even more so once I'm back to work)! Zoe is a much better napper at other times of day than Silas, but more on that later.
The best part is how happy they are when they wake up from a good sleep! This is a transition that has happened gradually, but it's definitely one of my favorite parts of the day!
Now, I definitely read up about infant sleeping before these guys arrived, and continue to do so as they get older (specifically, "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Twins" by Marc Weissbluth and "The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems" by Tracy Hogg). To my friends who are expecting babies, read my lips: SLEEP. TRAINING. Honestly, all this has meant for us is that starting at one month of age, we put the babies down for sleep when they were awake, but drowsy. It's very tempting to hold a newborn baby until they fall asleep, and in this way the baby never learns how to fall asleep on their own. In our case, with Derek working overnight and me putting the babies to bed by myself, that was not possible. I really think "awake but drowsy" is the key to S&Z having good sleep habits now. They are able to put themselves to sleep, consistently, for every nap and for every bedtime.
Now don't get me wrong, there is definitely the occasional squall here and there, where one of them protests for a little bit. Throughout the process of sleep training, we have used the "check and console" method (per the Weissbluth book). Of course I am oversimplifying here, there are a lot of nuances related to the perfect point in time to put them down for sleep based on behavioral cues, having a good "go to sleep routine" that cues them in it's time for sleep, etc. And I am fully prepared for the house of cards to come crashing down one day, because maybe we've just had a lucky streak...
Clearly I would like to take the bulk of the credit for the fact that I now get 7 hours of sleep a night, but maybe I had nothing to do with it. They might just be good sleepers :)
Now don't get me wrong, there is definitely the occasional squall here and there, where one of them protests for a little bit. Throughout the process of sleep training, we have used the "check and console" method (per the Weissbluth book). Of course I am oversimplifying here, there are a lot of nuances related to the perfect point in time to put them down for sleep based on behavioral cues, having a good "go to sleep routine" that cues them in it's time for sleep, etc. And I am fully prepared for the house of cards to come crashing down one day, because maybe we've just had a lucky streak...
Clearly I would like to take the bulk of the credit for the fact that I now get 7 hours of sleep a night, but maybe I had nothing to do with it. They might just be good sleepers :)
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