Sleep Log
7:30pm - got the kids to bed on time for once. And so it begins. Both are crying and I think they know what's going on by now and have hit their stride with the crying much faster. Right now I hear Caitlyn the most.
7:36pm - both kids are crying really hard right now. The evening stretches out really loooooong in front of me.
7:49pm - Victoria has fallen asleep! Please, oh please, let her stay asleep. Caitlyn is still crying intermittently and her eyes are wide open and she's looking around. The girls have taken to trailing off their crying with whimpers which gets to me even more than the loud crying.
7:53pm - Victoria is awake and crying now. Caitlyn looked like she was falling asleep but when Victoria started crying, she woke up and started crying again as well.
7:57pm - Daisy is wondering what the heck is going on. The girls are crying so loud and so hard that she has jumped off the bed and gone to stand in front of their bedroom door. She keeps looking at us as if to say "Are you two deaf? Can't you hear that? Obviously something is wrong...get up and check on them!" Yesterday, when the girls were screaming, she went running by the study on the way to their bedroom and when she saw me sitting on the bed (I was pumping), she put the brakes on and came trotting back to stare at me from the doorway as if to say "What are you doing in here? You should be in there!"
7:59pm - it appears that the girls have fallen asleep. Please, oh please, let that be it for tonight. That was 29 minutes of torture.
8:02pm - crying. again.
By 8:15, we had reached the 45 minute mark and my DH and I agreed that he would go in and do some soothing. He gave Caitlyn her pacifier and then left the room again. Victoria was asleep or doing a good imitation of a sleeping baby at that point. All was quiet for almost a half hour.
At 8:45pm, the girls started up again. Victoria fell asleep again by 9:30pm when I went in to soothe Caitlyn. She was quiet for another half hour and then started up again and continued in her on and off fashion until I went in to feed her at 11:15.
Both girls went down again without a fuss after the 11:30pm feed.
Victoria woke up at 4:30am and wanted to eat so I got up and changed her diaper and fed her. Caitlyn was stirring so I got her up, changed her diaper and fed her as well. She went back down without a murmur but Victoria has started fussing. She goes down after 15 minutes of fussing.
Both wake at 7am.
Thoughts
As I was half swaddling the kids tonight for bed, I found my eyes welling up with tears at the thought of the evening to come. I was asking them while I was feeding them to not cry so hard tonight and if they wanted to go to bed, to just close their eyes and breathe deeply and everything would be okay. I told them again that we loved them very much and wanted only the best for them and this was necessary. Then I put them down, walked away and cried.
I can't say that we saw any improvement on night 3 and the schedule the next day is completely out of time so I'm not quite sure what to make of this whole sleep training. Part of me is tempted to let it all go and do what we were doing before as they seemed happier and able to sleep, albeit with a fair amount of soothing. The other part of me is saying to tough it out, that we want them to learn how to put themselves to sleep and to eventually be able to sleep through the night. I know it has only been a few days but how long is this process going to take? I'm so tired and now I'm starting to hear crying when there isn't any crying.
Anyone have any war stories they would like to share? Any thoughts? Are we being unnecessarily mean?
Oh Sweetie. You are so not mean. You are tender hearted to begin with but with your children you have to expect it will be harder. You are doing what you need to do to help them grow into the amazing women I know they will become. Almost everything worth doing is hard to do. Unfortunate but true. Do what is best for the girls in the long run. You are a wonderful Mother. Sending lots of love, L
ReplyDeleteNo good advice here. You're not a bad Mom though, and it's just got to be worse because there are two of them.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure when it comes to twins. I can tell you what we did and hope that maybe something will help you guys. I do know that Cooper didn't sleep all night or even only wake up once a night until he was near 2 months old.
ReplyDeleteWe put him down late, like 11:30 or 12:00. We gave him a big bottle (we had to add cereal to his bottles due to reflux, I think it helped him sleep longer). But we would feed him while rocking him, put him in his crib, with the positioner around him. We would have him swaddled and covered with a receiving blanket. We gave him a paci to suck on (better than the thumb he loves to suck on so much :( We would turn on his humidifier. I love the noise it makes and it keeps him from hearing us or anything else in the house. That's about it. I'm sure the girls will start sleeping better and I'm so sorry that your so exhausted. I hope they get better soon. For your sake atleast.