Well, you’re never going to get it.

Barenaked Ladies (“Who Needs Sleep?”)

Sleep. It seems to be one of the top things on the minds of all new parents, especially parents of multiples. It was certainly one of the top thing on my mind after the girls were born. I cannot even remember how many times I googled “when do babies sleep through the night” or “how many hours does an X week old baby sleep” (somehow, I kept conveniently forgetting the previous answer and hoping it would change for the better the next time I searched). While babies certainly sleep a lot, they tend to do it in small chunks at times that aren’t very convenient for you (like the middle of the afternoon). I did not think I would be too affected by this as I typically do fairly well even on fractured sleep—I even had a few rather grueling finals weeks from college to prove it. But the one big difference between college finals week and taking care of newborns is that I knew that finals week would end and even knew when. Though I was pretty sure my babies would eventually sleep through the night, I had no idea at what point that miracle would occur—thus my frantic googling.

I also turned to my standby when faced with an unfamiliar situation—books. I essentially searched “sleep” in the library catalog, filtered down to parenting books, and checked out any that I could. Here are some of the books I read:

Twelve Hours Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old

I was skeptical based on the title but it was available as an audiobook which was nice given the sheer amount of time I spent breastfeeding, so I decided to give it a try. I still don’t think the lofty claim of the title is achievable for most babies (and the author specifically calls out that it will take longer than twelve weeks for multiples to sleep twelve hours), but I did get some good tips on extending nighttime sleep. Namely, you should try and reduce the amount you’re giving at a feeding you’re trying to eliminate and you should do your best to keep your babies from sliding “backwards,” i.e. taking the nighttime feed earlier than they did the previous night. Overall, it’s not a bad book if you approach it from the mindset of extending your baby’s nighttime sleep rather than actually achieving twelve hours of sleep for your baby.

The Happiest Baby Guide to Great Sleep

Honestly, this basically just seemed to repeat the content of The Happiest Baby on the Block. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t my favorite either, especially since I’m not a huge fan of his writing style. For those of you who haven’t read either book, the basic premise is that babies are calmed by what he calls the five S’s: swaddling, shushing, swinging, side (laying), and sucking. This book just extends that concept to say that because these things calm babies, they also help them sleep. Seems rather obvious.

Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems

Probably best known for being the origin of “Ferberizing” babies, i.e. letting them cry themselves to sleep. I read the second edition, and honestly, there is a ton of content in the book besides that, and he specifically acknowledges that he had never intended for people to only take that one lesson from his book. I think that the book was very good overall though a lot of it was not relevant for infants. There also was not really a lot of specific advice for helping babies sleep longer.

The No-Cry Sleep Solution

I got this as a counter to the other books I was reading since the author mentions a hatred of the cry it out method. Perhaps I was too hormonal at the time that I read it, but I somehow came away with the impression that I needed to respond immediately to the twins’ cries. Needless to say, this is impossible with a singleton, much less twins, but trying to do so stressed me out and caused me to snipe at my husband a couple times. Ironically, this was probably worse for the babies than crying a few minutes here or there. While there were some good tips on how to help babies sleep longer in this book, for me at least, they were unfortunately obscured by my anxiety over letting them cry at all. My husband did eventually manage to talk me down, so things got better, but I’m a bit wary of attachment parenting books now.

Babywise

I save this for last because it is probably the most controversial on the list. Perhaps it is the fact that I got a newer addition, but I did not get the impression that so many others did that the author was telling parents not to feed their babies when they were hungry. Despite the fact that I usually prefer books more grounded in research, I found that I really liked this one. It had practical advice that could be easily applied. In particular, I liked the idea of trying to keep them on an eat-play-sleep schedule, and making sure they take a full feeding each time they eat has helped a lot in keeping them from eating constantly.

So, what did my babies’ sleep look like over time?

This was the question I kept trying to answer with all my reading and googling—what should my babies’ sleep schedule be at X weeks of age. Every baby is of course different, but I will tell you about our girls’ journey to sleeping “through the night.” (Note: I define this as anything greater than six hours.) Maybe this will give you some assurance that things do get better and you won’t be sleep deprived forever. At the very least, hopefully you can take some of the things we did to help them sleep and apply them in your own way to your own baby.

Birth-Two Weeks

Our girls were born at 35 weeks, 6 days, so they were a little premature. This means they were very sleepy the first couple weeks after their birth. In fact, we generally had to wake them up for feedings. They were eating every three hours (note: as is convention, we measure time between feedings as the time of the start of one feeding to the start of the next), so we were still up a lot at night, but they really didn’t do anything except eat, burp, get a diaper change, and sleep.

Three Weeks

They had gained weight well at their two week appointment, so our pediatrician gave us the go ahead to stop waking them up at night and let them wake us on their own when they were hungry. We were very excited by this. . . until they only extended their first nighttime feeding by about 15 minutes and the second not at all. Note that if one of them woke up to feed, we would wake the other one as well to keep them on the same schedule. I know some books/twin parents recommend waking one right after the other so that it is easier to feed them by yourself. While it’s certainly difficult to feed/change/burp two babies when you stagger schedules, I’ve found it’s very possible and prevents you from spending virtually every waking moment feeding/changing/burping.

Four Weeks

They were still gaining weight well, so we got the go ahead to start weaning them off their supplement. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I got a bit too enthusiastic about this. The doctor told us we could go down to supplementing only four feedings. While I knew that I could not do this all at once, I also wanted to wean them off as quickly as I could. Thus, I cut out an entire supplement. And then Pretzel wanted to nurse until nearly midnight at which point I finally fell asleep exhausted only to have Peanut wake up less than an hour later. Mr. BBB gamely offered to take her (likely spurred on by my grumblings about how she could not possibly be hungry again) and, after pacing with her for awhile, gave her a couple ounces of formula at which point both of them fell asleep exhausted. We had a couple other sleepless nights this week (though none as bad as that one). Honestly, this was probably the worst week sleep-wise we had.

Five-Six Weeks

We began weaning them much more slowly and they settled into waking twice at night. We would put them down around 9:00 and then they would wake up somewhere between midnight and 1:00 and again around 4:00. I had not yet established a daytime routine, so I would just let them wake up when they needed more food and then try to make sure they ate roughly every three hours. They did still have their witching hour from about 5:00-8:00PM where they would fuss if they weren’t nursing continuously (though my aunt discovered you could sometimes calm them down by rocking, patting their bottom, and, in Peanut’s case, rubbing her head. I suddenly wished I had practiced the “rub your stomach, pat your head” game more as a child).

Seven-Nine Weeks

I was preparing to go back to work at this point (I split my leave for various project reasons with Mr. BBB taking the time between my two periods of leave), so I wanted to get them on a more predictable schedule for Mr. BBB. I therefore started waking them at 7:00AM no matter what time they woke up the previous night and then again at 10:00AM, 1:00PM, and 4:00PM if they were not already up. If they got hungry earlier than these times, I would of course feed them though I would try and stretch the next feeding to the scheduled time if I could.  I also added in a late night dream feed before I went to bed. Basically, I would wake them at 10:30PM and feed and change them one last time to “tank them up” for the night. When I first started this, they would wake at 2:00AM and often again at 5:00AM, but it took less than a week for them to start waking closer to 3:00AM and then sleep through to 7:00AM (or nearly 7:00AM).

Nine-Eleven Weeks

I started working to try and move the middle of the night feed later/reducing the amount of milk to try and eliminate it. My thought was that if I could get them waking at 6:00AM or later, I would stop bothering to feed them at 7:00AM and make 6:00AM their new wakeup time. We did have a couple setbacks, i.e. times when they would wake twice at night, but by the end of this time period, as long as we didn’t do anything to mess up their routine, they would generally not wake until 4:00AM and then again at 7:00AM.

Twelve-Thirteen Weeks

Pretzel discovered her thumb followed shortly by Peanut. As an experiment, I left Pretzel’s arms out of her swaddle during a naptime near the beginning of this period. She soothed herself the first time she woke with her thumb, but she was a bit too uncoordinated to do it again and ended up flailing until she woke herself fully. Peanut was not even able to soothe herself once, so I tabled the idea for later. A couple days later, the opportunity presented itself on a holiday weekend where I figured I would have three days where I didn’t need to get up. I tried a couple naps first, and things seemed to go better than last time. Finally, I worked up the courage to leave their arms out of the swaddle at night (I put them in sleep sacks instead). It worked! They didn’t wake me up until 4:53AM (yes, I remember the exact time). I rejoiced despite the fact that before children, 5 hours, 48 minutes of sleep would have been not nearly enough for my needs.

Fourteen weeks

They slid back into a 4:00AM waking pattern for a few days, but I held out hope that we would get to 5:00AM soon. Then, miraculously, I woke up one day and it was light outside. My first instinct was to rush to their crib, but upon seeing them both still breathing, I couldn’t help but think we had finally done it. Barely three months old, and our kids were sleeping through the night without needing to resort to the cry it out method. It was 5:34AM, and I was unreasonably happy for such an early hour. I let them continue to sleep, and they finally woke at 6:09AM. The next morning, some muttering woke me at around 5:30AM, but a thumb was quickly obtained at which point peace settled over the household until 6:45AM. I danced a happy jig.

Fifteen weeks-Present

They once more slid backwards, but only to 5:30AM and only for two days. Then, they started waking very consistently just before 6:00AM. And by very consistently, I mean that they fuss, I take them out of their crib and settle in the chair to feed them, and my 6:00 alarm goes off. I probably don’t need the alarm any more, but I learned the hard way on the day they slept until 6:45 that I cannot let them go too long without milk or I have more problems than hungry babies. We had two mornings where they woke around 5:15AM instead, but both of them were my fault for breaking the routine the day before. I worked them back onto the routine the next day, and they started sleeping until 6:00AM again.

I actually had to wake them at 6:15 today. I will probably do that for a few more days and then work to change the 10:30PM feeding into a 10:30PM pumping session which will likely get me to bed fifteen minutes sooner. That fifteen minutes may not sound like much, but to me, it’s something to relish.

Tips and Tricks that Helped Us with Sleep

I certainly am no expert on baby sleep, but I thought I would share the tips that I gleaned from the many books I read which worked best for us. Obviously, every baby is different and every family is different so not all of them will work for you, but I hope that some might help.

1. Routine! This is the most important piece of a good night’s sleep in my opinion (and the only thing that all the books seemed to agree on). For us, this started with a consistent time to wake up in the morning. Once we had established that, the rest of the feedings fell into a somewhat predictable pattern. It’s definitely hard to wake a sleeping baby, but trust me when I say the rewards are well worth it. During the day, we also used the “Eat, play, sleep” routine which is exactly what it sounds like—we would feed them, set them down to play, and put them in their crib when they started to show signs of sleepiness.
2. Try to get them to take a full feeding each time they eat. Peanut in particular likes to snack—she would nurse for a few minutes and then fall asleep at the nipple. If we let her keep sleeping, she would wake up starving less than an hour later, and I would be feeding her constantly. By waking her up (generally, we did so by changing her diaper), we could get her to take a full feeding and then last three hours before the next one.
3. If you’re going to supplement at all, supplement before you put them down for the night. This is the only supplemental bottle we have not yet eliminated and will likely not eliminate until they are on solids and getting most of their calories from those.
4. If you have twins, wake them at the same time for feedings. There are ways to feed two babies at once, and you will get very good at them with some practice. Burping was always the hardest part for me, but I eventually discovered I could put one on my shoulder while I bounced the other on my knee.
5. Even if you don’t believe in letting them cry it out, I would still recommend letting them fuss for at least a minute when they wake up before going to them. I was not usually able to let them go longer than about two minutes, but even with this short time period, they could settle themselves more than half the time before I could get to them.
6. Don’t be too proud to use a pacifier. Some babies just need to suck, and you probably want your fingers to do other things.  
7. Swaddle for the first few weeks but stop once they find their thumbs and can soothe themselves with them.
8. Don’t assume that they’re hungry every time they cry. Nursing might soothe them, but it provides much more than just nourishment. Nursing gives them warmth, comfort, and something to suck on. Unless they’re giving you clear signs of hunger or it’s a time they normally eat, try something else (rocking, pacifier insertion, singing, etc.) before turning to nursing.

Hopefully something in here has helped you. Know that it does get better and if you’re ever feeling overwhelmed, feel free to reach out and I’m always happy to help with any other advice I can offer or just a sympathetic ear of someone who has been there and survived.