So, I am just now getting time to sit down and blog about what's been happening over the last 2 months. This is because month 2 was HORRIBLE!! Month 1 was pretty easy because the twins basically just slept all the time.. so they spent most of the day/night in rock-n-plays or swings and I had tons of free time! Well, in the second month they started to be awake more often.. and we quickly discovered Londyn had her days/nights mixed up. She would sleep all day long, then wake up around 10pm and be wide awake ready to play and explore. I would rock her for 45+ minutes to get her asleep, then as soon as I would put her in her bassinet she would SCREAM at the top of her lungs until I picked her back up. So we moved her to her rock-n-play to sleep at night, and that worked for about 4 nights. Then she would scream as soon as we put her in that until we picked her back up. As soon as we would finally get her to sleep by about 4 am, Xander was up an hour later ready for the day!! That means I was only getting maybe an hour of sleep a night, with no time during the day to cook, clean, eat, shower, nap.. nothing!! Literally just running around all day every day. Then we tried to solve the problem again by me going to bed with Xander at 9pm and Will staying in the living room playing with Londy until about 3am when I would go get her and put her to bed, then he would sleep in with Londyn when I got up with Xander at 6. This was a short term fix though, because Will had to go back to work in a couple of weeks and had to sleep! I didn't know what I was going to do.
The first week Will went back to work was a hot mess. It seemed like as soon as Londyn fell asleep, Xander was up. Then he would fall asleep and Londyn was up. 30 minutes after I fed one, the other was hungry. They were eating every hour or 2 and were only sleeping in 30-40 minute increments, and never at the same time. I was so tired and overwhelmed, and I hate to admit this but I started being ugly to the kids and sometimes literally begging them to go to sleep or stay asleep. It was awful!!
So about a week ago it was 2am and I was in the living room with Xander because he wouldn't go back to sleep, and I didn't want to wake Will since he had to go to work in the morning. I was scrolling facebook and saw a video about the secrets to getting your baby to sleep. I was desperate and this point so I clicked the link that took me to a website about a sleep training program to try. There were so many testimonies about people who started the program and got their babies sleeping through the night within the first or second night (whaaaaat??!) I figured I have NOTHING to lose at this point, so I purchased the program and started binge watching all the videos about how to sleep train. The basic principle is this:
Babies go through sleep cycles of Deep (REM) sleep and light (Non REM) sleep every 30-45 minutes. They don't know how to get back to sleep after they wake from the REM sleep, so they start crying. If they are picked up/rocked/given a pacifier/etc. when they wake, they never learn the skill of putting themselves back to sleep. This results in the toddlers who are out of bed every 10 minutes wanting water or coming to your bedroom.. they can't go back to sleep without assistance. So my job was to set a schedule and be consistent with it. If the twins cried the entire time they were in their cribs for nap, that's ok because they are learning/practicing how to put themselves to sleep. I found the master schedule for their age group and began on Monday (12/4). And it was terrible. They both cried throughout every single nap. It was loud, heart wrenching, and so so hard to get through.. but I just put my headphones in and binge watched the training videos and reminded myself why I was doing what I was doing. I was just about ready to give up on it by bedtime.. but amazingly enough, Londyn slept through the night with the exception of night time feedings and she was IN HER CRIB. That's right!! Not a rock-n-play, not in my arms, not screaming every 30 minutes to be rocked for an hour in the middle of the night.. she just slept right on through! And Xander didn't wake up once!! So the claim about them sleeping through the night on night 1 was real!! Immediately I was back on the sleep training wagon and we continued on to day 2. Each day they cried a little bit less during nap, and slept through the night except for feedings. That brings us to today, day 5 of sleep training. They are to the point now that they start getting tired about 10 minutes before the set nap times, and when I lay them in their cribs for nap, they go right to sleep with no rocking, shushing, singing, yelling, begging, etc.!! They do still wake up and cry in the middle of nap but they are getting so much better at putting themselves back to sleep. The challenge now is learning how to sleep through each other's crying. Right now, if one screams loud and long enough, it wakes the other up.. and then they are both crying. Once they learn this skill and master their daily schedule, my job will be super easy!! Many people don't agree with the "cry it out" method.. and if you think I'm a bad mom for putting my kids through it, I'm ok with that. This training is maybe a week out of their entire lives, and it teaches them the lifelong skill of how to SLEEP. And I'm not being ugly to them anymore, nor am I on the verge of tears before lunch time. This is not a popular method of training for many mothers, but it works for us and that's all that matters!!
So, here we are!! Will is back to work, the twins are operating on a schedule, I'm officially a stay at home mom, and things are trucking right along! Here's to month #4!
Our Family 12/01/17
Monthly Pictures 1, 2, and 3!
