Sleep Like a Baby

I don't know who made up that saying...with the implication that baby sleep is peaceful and tranquil.  Spoiler alert - it's not.  Or at least, not all the time.  I seriously don't know how I made it this long in life without knowing that!  Babies are so noisy...or at least ours are, particularly Ellie.  She's much better now but there is still a fair amount of grunting and carrying on that goes on at night.  I guess we're just used to it at this point.

[caption id="attachment_756" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Girls Night Out now consists of napping[/caption]

And when you have infants, the questions people always ask you are "How much are they sleeping?  Are you getting any sleep? Sleep, sleep, sleeeeeeeep!"  I understand - I really do.  It's the thing I am curious about with infants, as well.   As such, I thought I should document how things are going in that department.  For posterity, you know.

The first six weeks were such a blur...I'm not even sure when, how and where we were sleeping.  I know Jack and Ellie were definitely NOT on the same schedule as we were still feeding on demand.  And they both were pretty consistently eating every three hours (or less!) and sleeping in between.  I watched a LOT of TV during that time...especially in the middle of the night so I didn't fall asleep during feedings.   I would go to bed around 7pm to get a few hours of sleep and then take over for Nick.  I don't remember a lot about those weeks. :)  Thank goodness for all the help from our family and friends, in particular - Nick's mom who stayed with us for two weeks and my parents who were with us for the first few weeks and then as needed.

Eventually we got the hang of feeding them both at the same time and with the blessing of our pediatrician (he wanted them to be around 10 lbs before we started a schedule...apparently ability to sleep for longer periods of time is related to the weight of babies...who knew?), instituted more of a schedule for feedings.  I am using the term schedule very loosely because it is still driven by their needs. But, if one baby wakes to eat, the other one generally is going to get woken up shortly thereafter to eat.  Sometimes we feed at the same time and some times we feed back to back, but we try really hard to keep them eating at around the same time. Hence, because we have more of a feeding schedule, we are also starting to develop more of a nap/night schedule.

Up until about a week or so ago, Jack was still waking more frequently than Ellie to eat at night, but we were down to just one feeding in those wee hours...usually around 2am or 3am.  I think we are inching closer to sleeping through the night, but I am not in any particular hurry...to be sleeping through the night at 11 weeks (7 weeks adjusted because of their early arrival) is not necessarily an attainable goal.  I'm really just working on slowly increasing the amount of time they are sleeping at night and helping them go back to sleep when they wake at night...without immediately jumping to feed them.  The things that work really well to help 'cue' them to sleep at night are a sound machine (I like ocean waves, Nick is partial to rain and thunder...the sound machine is on as loud as it will go...at first, I found this disconcerting, but from what I've read, the louder the better for white noise), a darkened rooms and sleep sacks.  We use the swaddling sleep sacks because Jack sleeps better with his arms swaddled.   They are still in the co-sleeper in our room and while I keep saying that we are going to move them to their cribs, I am in no hurry to do so.  I find it is much easier to take care of them when they are so close.  And well...it just makes me feel better to have our babies next to us.  They are too small for their cribs!  Not really, but when I put them in their cribs, it looks so imposing.  However, I purposely mix up nap location...sometimes in the boppy, sometimes in our bed (while I watch them), the pack and play, the swing, a blanket on the floor, their carseats.  My goal is for these babies to be able to sleep wherever and so far, I think I'm succeeding.

Last night, Jack slept from 10:30pm-4:30am and Ellie slept from 11pm to 5am (although, she might have been able to go longer, but I woke her up to feed because OMG! The SCHEDULE!).  You'd think that would mean I was able to sleep until 4:30am...nope.  I woke at 3am, confused because babies weren't crying.  Then, they started making noises like they MIGHT want to get up, so I spent some time putting pacifiers in to help them soothe themselves back to sleep.  It worked really well on Jack, but Ellie was crying a bit, so I brought her to bed with me and she immediately zonked out.  Even though I didn't get to enjoy the fruits of the extra sleep, I am still putting this in the 'win' column.

Our next big hurdle is going to be figuring out a schedule for when I go back to work, which is in a week. I have no idea how that's going to work, but I'm hoping if we inch up their bedtime and keep the one night time feeding around 2am or 3am, we can wake them up at 6am or so to get ready for the day.  Or something like that.  Obviously, babies have their own ideas about how these things should work. :)

I've been reading a lot of sleep advice and honestly, all it does is stress me out.  Every author has a different opinion and I've just realized that while having the advice of experts is nice, it's more important to do what comes naturally and happens organically.  Babies know what they need.  I will say the one piece of advice I find helpful is 'sleep begets sleep'.  So, we follow an Eat, Play, Sleep pattern throughout the day with the goal of never having the babies awake for more than about 90 minutes or so.  Ellie has developed a habit of getting cranky at night, but other than that, things are working for us.  They've also started stretching out their nap in the afternoon (3-4 hours), which is awesome.

What would a piece devoted to sleep be without pictures of adorable sleeping babies?  Some of my favorites...