Possibly one of the most coveted goals during those first months of motherhood: getting your baby/babies to sleep through the night! If you were like me before babies, I LOVED my sleep! I NEEDED my sleep! I COULD NOT function without it! This was honestly one of my biggest fears entering into motherhood! Then finding out we were having twins, I just knew I was going to be on a major struggle bus!
Now, while breastfeeding twin preemies every 3 hours around the clock for the first month was VERY time consuming and my sleep was little during the night, I was SUPER blessed to have a mom, mother in law, aunts, friends and the best husband who helped me a lot! (This goes back to my tips of Pumping and Accepting Help in my Top 10 Tips for New Twin Moms post!) I typically got one good nap in a day! After that first month, the doctor gave us the okay to start letting the girls sleep as long as they wanted during the night. It felt so strange not setting an alarm that first night! From then on my girls gradually started sleeping longer and longer stretches until finally by 12 weeks they were sleeping ALL NIGHT LONG! Once you get used to only sleeping 1.5-2 hours at a time, a 4-5 hour slumber is amazing and that first full night of 8 hours is LIFE CHANGING! Here are my top tips to help you get your precious little one to la la land all night!
**Note: I am NOT a doctor, nurse or licensed sleep consultant. I am just a mom and these are my thoughts and the processes we used that worked for us. Please consult your child’s pediatrician on their bedtime routine and activities.
SWADDLE
From day one in the hospital, we swaddled the girls every night! At first they were so tiny that we could use the hospital blankets or these Aiden + Anais swaddles and get them all nice and snug! After a couple weeks they were able to wiggle their little arms out and it would wake them up EVERY TIME! Never failed. Then we started using the Swaddle Me velcro swaddles! I loved these and I recommend them to all my friends who are expecting! We used these with the girls until they could roll over in them. (About 3 months) We tried one night of no swaddle and it was an epic disaster! I immediately ordered the Merlin’s Magic Sleepsuits from Amazon Prime and we swaddled for two more nights until they arrived! The sleepsuits really did work like magic! They come in a fleece and cotton material and I didn’t know this but the way it happened for us worked! The first ones I ordered, in the 3-6 months size, were the fleece ones. My girls didn’t get too hot in them and still wore footie PJs with them. (You can always put your baby in an onesie or just a diaper if they are really hot natured.) For the 6-9 months size, I ordered the cotton material suits. In my opinion, these aren’t as stiff as the fleece suits so it allowed my girls to get used to a little more movement. (See, it luckily worked out in our favor! YAY!) Then at 8 months we took them out of the sleep suits and they did really good! At first they would wake up a little earlier in the morning but eased back into their normal wake time. If your little one has trouble transitioning out of the sleep suit, I think the next step would be a sleep sack. This gives full use of their arms if they roll over but also gives them a little extra feeling of security. *Note: We did NOT use the Velcro swaddles or sleep suits for naptimes; we just used the Aiden + Anais blankets. I think this may have helped them distinguish between the two and sleep better/longer at night. Maybe not but it worked for us!
BOTTLE BEFORE BED
Another reason why I believe that even if you are breastfeeding you should utilize a pump! There are a whole list of reasons in my New Twin Mom tips post but to help them stay full during the night is a major one! If you are breastfeeding you have an idea about how many ounces your little one is getting but you aren’t exactly sure. If you pump and give your little one a bottle before bed, you know exactly how much milk they are getting. I also gave my girls my morning pumped milk at night because it has a higher fat content to help keep them full. We had to supplement a little bit in the beginning because they girls were preemies and we did it at this feeding since formula stays in their system a little longer than breastmilk. I also knew that by the time I went back to work, I would be done breastfeeding, so we decided that for their nighttime bottle we would continue mixing in some formula to keep them used to the taste and their tummies used to it as well. It made the transition to all formula really easy.
This also kept my babies from having to nurse to fall asleep. There are a lot of things I wouldn’t have minded to do if we would have only had one baby but with twins I didn’t want to create habits that would be hard to break down the road.
ELEVATE
For the first few months of the girls’ life, they slept in their rock n plays and then we transitioned into the pack n play in our room. Right before Thanksgiving (about 5 months old) we switched them to their Jenny Lind cribs. The pack n play was a nice transition between the rock n play and crib elevation wise. We put a rolled blanket underneath the pack n play mattress for slight elevation and also the same with their cribs. You could also get a crib wedge to put under the mattress of their crib if you wanted too! There were a couple times when one of them would get sick/congested and we would move them back to the rock n play that was more elevated and that helped them sleep a LOT better then! It also made me sleep better when they were sick because they were right beside my bed. They did really well going back to their cribs after being sick but if they didn’t, you could always use the pack n play for a couple nights to help transition back to a flatter sleeping angle. I think that since they were used to sleeping in all 3 of these items it made switching back and forth, if needed when they were sick, so easy! Something that could ruin your established routine didn’t for us!
DAYTIME FEEDINGS
As the girls got older I noticed that they would go longer than every 3 hours during the day in between feedings. At first this seemed great so that I didn’t feel like I was constantly feeding a baby all day long but our pediatrician gave us the advice to stick with our 3 hour feeding schedule during the day. I am SO glad that she did because if we would have switched to a 4 hour schedule, I guarantee the girls would have wanted and probably needed a night time feeding to get all their milk in. So stick with that strict 3 hour feeding schedule during the day and it will help them stay full and sleep throughout the night! Yay!
BE CONSISTENT
This one is a given. Pick a routine and stay with it! I really believe that babies/kids thrive on routine! It cues mental signals in their brain so they know what is about to happen and that is soothing for them. When the girls started having more awake time during the day is when we really started establishing a bedtime routine. They would get a bath or warm washcloth wipe down, get PJs on, night time bottle, get swaddled or suited up and then we would rock them to sleep. Yes, we rocked our girls to sleep and no they didn’t wake when we laid them down so we enjoyed that cuddle time! There were a couple nights that they would randomly wake up when we put them down, but they would whimper for a few minutes and then we would soothe them back to sleep. That process may have happened 2-5 times but eventually they would go back to being laid down and not waking up. It worked for us! Then around 10/11 months old they didn’t want to be rocked anymore. (Tear!) They wanted to be in their crib, stretch out and fall asleep on their own! I was kind of bummed out about it really.
Fast forward to today, the girls are 18 months old and still GREAT sleepers! They sleep from 8:30 PM to 8:00 AM and take a 2-3 hour nap after lunch! Our bedtime routine now: they drink their milk around 7:30 PM while watching a little Mickey Mouse, then we play, put PJs on, brush our teeth, read books, they get their buddy and paci (only at nap/bedtime now) and we lay them down for bed at 8:30 PM. We have been extremely blessed with good sleepers and I hope that some of these tips will work for you and getting your little one to sleep! Their pediatrician once said to me that, “Well-rested babies rest well,” and I could not agree more!
What are some of your tips or items you used to help get your little ones to sleep? Did you have to do anything different during a sleep regression? During teething? Comment below and let me know!
Great post! Love the tips!