The babies slept through the night last night!!!
Ready for our secret?
Well, too bad. We don’t have one. We didn’t do anything. The babies apparently sleep trained themselves and we just allowed it to happen.
Here’s the progression.
In January, they dropped one of the overnight feedings and started sleeping 5-6 hours. (It started the night they got their shots–they were so worn out that we just let them sleep and they just kept going.) We started feeding them extra at the last feeding to make up for the dropped one. So for this time they were sleeping from 1am-ish to 6am-ish. I would have to pump at both of those feedings. I stayed up and often did that last one on my own, while Andy went to bed to get more sleep, since he had to work.
Then about two weeks ago, they dropped another overnight feeding. They slept from about 10 to 2 or 3am, then we fed them and they slept until 8 or so. We weren’t waking them up; we went by when they woke up. I would pump around 10pm and then again when we fed them overnight. Since we were back to both of us doing the feeding, we kept them in our room for it, like we did for their first two weeks. It was actually kind of nice, that quiet, dark hour, the four of us together. (Between then and now they would have either stayed downstairs or been brought down, since only one of us was doing those feedings.) It also meant that both of us were getting about two three-hour stretches of sleep. This added up to more than we’d been getting previously (five or so hours), but it was even tougher to have that interruption instead of one solid block of rest. As for feedings, we continued to give them an extra ounce at the last evening feeding and the first morning feeding.
Over the last few days,we started attempting a bedtime routine. We put them in their swaddle sacks before they start eating (we’d been doing it after and it woke them up), turn all the lights off except one floor lamp, and put on music. One of them (it’s never consistently one in particular) usually falls asleep while eating, and the other will often finish eating and fall asleep later, after we put him down.
Also over the last couple days, they started waking up later overnight; the night before last they woke up at 430am. They woke up again around 930, which is the latest we’ve ever started the day.
So last night one of them made a bit of noise at 5am. Whichever baby it was quieted right back down, though. So we figured that we would just wait and see what would happen. I had to get up anyway to pump, so I left the three of them to go back to sleep. And they did! At 7 one of them started stirring and making more waking-up noise (the other was still asleep–that baby had eaten more at the last feeding). So we got them up! M was very antsy, clearly hungry, but he was also really happy and cheerful. It was so cute. No matter how tired I am when I pick them up or wake them up, I can’t help but smile at them and they are often smiling at me, and I instantly feel a little more awake.
I have no idea how we got so lucky even this far with their sleep, and of course we have no idea if this long stretch of sleep will continue. I sure hope so! We need to figure out how to keep their intake the same for the day, without feeding them too much at one time (they spit up). I’m hoping they’ll start being awake more during the day and napping more consistently–currently it’s kind of whenever. I also know there’s a sleep regression coming in about a month, so I hope that we can start recovering a bit and be more rested before that craziness happens.
We Have Twins?! 