Go The F* To Sleep

Ok I'd probably never say that to my children, but boy, do I feel where the author of that book is coming from.

So after a few days of some VERY fussy babies, some on-and-off sleeping through the night, some extreme clinginess, and a very tired momma...I decided it was time to do some sleep training! They're still a little young, but considering they have never slept in their cribs before, I thought we should probably get things started.

The twins have a great bedtime routine and I think that's because we established it from the very beginning. Between 7:30-8pm we take them upstairs. We bath them, do mini-baby massages with lotion, feed them, and put them to bed by 9. They USUALLY go to sleep pretty quickly. Then things get messy. If they ate well that day, they'll sleep for 5 or 6 hours. If they didn't, they'll be up in 2 or 3 hours. If they slept well and had a good active day, they sleep 5 or 6 hours. If they have a bad day, they'll be up every 2-3 hours. So I figured setting up a schedule during the day might get them into a schedule at night (preferably sleeping for 5 or 6 hours through the night).

Well day 1 was terrible. Jack cried for the ENTIRE time. I'd put him down, he'd cry for 15 minutes. I capped the cryfest there and would go in to cuddle. He'd quiet down, I'd put him back to bed and we'd repeat the cryfest. For an entire hour this went on. And then he went down into his swing where he quieted down. Boy loves his swing. Mia slept for almost 2 hours, then woke up in hysterics. So I got her up and fed her and called it a mini-success.

We're on day 2 now, I'm far from being an expert.

Nap time started out like this...

That's (by some miracle) 1 sleeping boy and 1 wide awake baby girl. After some intermittent screaming though, we had 2 sleeping babies for about 45 minutes! woohoo!

But after that 45 minutes, nap time went down the drain with 2 hysterical hungry babies (keep in mind, at this point they had just eaten 2 hours ago...they act like I starve them or something). I decided to hold them off from eating for another hour (seriously, how starving can you possibly be? you JUST ate kids!) and nap time ended with this...

Brother Sister tummy time!

Of course, about 10 minutes in, that ended too. And here we are...with 2 babies who sort of napped and ate like pigs all afternoon.

Still an exhausted mommy. When do things start working out in my favor? And when does daddy get home from work?? :)

I ordered The Happiest Baby on the Block and a few other books on Amazon about sleep training and baby wrangling. We'll see if they have any good tips. Out of all the pregnancy, newborn, and baby books I've seen so far though, the most I've learned has simply been from experience. So we'll see where we end up in another week or 2....

To be continued....