Finally We Put Two & Two Together

At 8 weeks (6 weeks ago) we transitioned the twins out of sleeping in Boppys on our bed (yes, I said OUR bed...I can see the horror on the hospital nurses faces now) to sleeping in their own bed. How quickly our jubilant elation turned on us in the very first week. We had grand ideas of our baby boys co-sleeping peacefully together in the same crib in their very own room. You would think that since this is not our first baby rodeo that we would have had a clue that this was not going to work. But I had read plenty of stories on-line (which are always researched based material right?) leading up to the birth that all suggested that twins LOVE to sleep with each other. Well it does make sense since technically they had been sleeping together for 8 months. However, the reality of it is this: once one baby wakes to eat the other one is soon to follow and if one baby makes a noise like a sneeze (which happens every 4 sec. in those early days) then the other one is wide awake too. So what I've learned so far on this whole twin co-sleeping theory is it might work for 'identical twins' who shared the same sac in the womb and are used to skin-to-skin contact, but for 'paternal twins' like ours, that were in different sacs, it has not worked for us so far.

Since our house only allows for 1 nursery somebody had to move to the crib in the nursery and somebody had to sleep in the pack-n-play in our room. Ryan proved to be the better sleeper early on so we decided he should be in our room and Jacob should sleep in the crib. Just as we thought, Ryan did great sleeping close by us without waking through the night. However, Jacob continued to wake up at exactly 3am every evening like clockwork! It didn't make sense...he's the bigger twin he should be sleeping longer. It had already been two weeks since I weened both babies off of that middle of the night nursing desire so why was he still waking? His pitiful little whine sounded like he just wanted to be held or just wanted his pacifier. But neither would keep him asleep for long. At this point it started to drive me crazy. Here we have one twin sleeping to 4:30-5:00am and the other one sleeping until 3:00am. I so badly wanted to get over this hump that I was ready to change things up to figure out what was waking Jacob.

MY SLEEP DEPRIVED PLAN:

*Swaddle them super tight...
*When in doubt "pump them full" at bedtime ...

*Add Rice Cereal to their bedtime bottle to make them feel REAL full...

*Turn the AC vent off in their room that was pumping in a lot of cold air...

*Move the pack-n-play into the nursery...
*Move the pack-n-play back out because Ryan started to not sleep well, arrgh...
*Replace the crib bumper to make it feel more closed in and cozy...
*Turn a night light on...

I feel like we've tried everything that we could possibly think of. Babies here and babies there, babies together, babies apart. Luckily, Taylor's sleep has not been affected by any of this craziness! So after this very long post here is where we stand now. Both babies are still sleeping apart (Ryan in our room in the pack-n-play and Jacob in the crib in the nursery). However, we finally have 2 babies sleeping through the night!!! Considering I haven't slept through the night in over 3 months, I couldn't be happier at this moment - whew, now they better just stay that way!