I'm Here! and Latest Happenings

I'm sure my absence in the last week after my last post was misleading- but unintentional! Our router died, and so my internet usage has been minimal for a few days. I am hoping to get back in the saddle and get back to posting and commenting asap!

Latest news:

After my MIL stayed for a week while my husband was gone, my mother came to visit for a few days this week. I am glad that our visitors are over for a while now. My husband's next work trip is in 3 weeks, and I plan on doing it completely solo. I may just take a few days off of work during the week, but I think I can come out on the other side without having a mental breakdown (all bets are off if Sam and Anna are in the thick of teething, which is highly likely).

I signed our babies up for swimming lessons which start in a week, so I've gotten really excited for that! I have a friend enlisted for help during the week my husband is gone, since there needs to be an adult per baby at all times. Just yet another way life with twins is a little more involved than with a single baby- all four of us will be making swimming lessons a family event!

This probably belongs on my still-missing 7 month post, but in the last month we dropped a nap and went down to 2 naps a day, which magically improved the quality of their naps. We had been doing well on 3 naps a day and then they started to turn into short crapnaps again. I took that as a sign that they were ready to transition to 2 naps, and lo and behold- on two naps a day, the actual time asleep during naps ended up longer than they 3 crapnaps they had been having. Right now, Sam and Anna seem to have fallen into a nap around 9 am (usually 1 1/2 hours-2 hours) and a nap around 1 pm (usually 2 hours long, sometimes 2 1/2 hours). When switching to 2 naps, we lengthened our feeding schedule to 4ish hours between bottles, which has also helped them drink better each time.

In the last week, we also added in a third meal. With two meals, Sam had started drinking in the high 30's for ounces on top of the 2 solid meals, and one day even drank 41 oz (which puts too much strain on his little kidneys to process), so we added a meal in the hopes it would drop his formula consumption. I find it incredibly ironic that after our long issues of drinking too little and working so hard to get every little ounce in our babies, that our current problem was that they were drinking too much. Go figure. So Sam and Anna now get a breakfast, lunch, and dinner in between their bottles. They still drink around 6-9 ounces each bottle though. They aren't huge solid meal eaters- usually a little more than 2 oz before they get full/bored. (hard to tell, since we have homemade food and I split the food between the babies. It also depends on if the food is a fav or not.)

This is what our schedule looks like right now:

• 6:30 am wake and bottle (about 6 oz)
• 8:30 am ish breakfast meal: fruit+ cereal
• 9:00 am ish down for nap

• 10:30/11:00 am ish 2nd bottle (7-8 oz usually)
• 12:30 pm ish lunch meal: fruit and veggie (or 2 veggies if dinner is just a fruit)
• 1:00 pm ish 2nd nap

• 3:00/3:30 pm ish 3rd bottle (7-8 oz usually)
• 5:00 pm dinner meal: new food + sometimes something that goes well with it
• 6:30 pm bedtime bottle (9 oz)

Our Goal

As requested by Kate, here is our daily schedule goal right now. I think the word "goal" is important to use, because you've still got to be flexible. If your babies are hungry, you feed them- no matter what time the clock says. And you can't be a hermit- the schedule sometimes gets thrown to the wind on atypical days or when you go someplace. I loosely use a Babywise schedule. I think the most important thing when instituting a schedule is to have a set wake time in the morning that you don't deviate from, and the rest falls into place fairly easily. I've found after watching their sleepy cues like a hawk that Sam and Anna's wake time is shorter first thing in the morning, but typically is around 1 hour 15 minutes to an hour and a half right now. As they get older, their schedule will change. When I go back to work in September, they will have a 6:30 am wake time instead as well.

7 am- (we wake them up every day to keep them on track, even on weekends) Wake Eat Play
8 am ish to 10 am- (after showing sleepy signs) Nap in cribs
10 am- Wake Eat Play (often this is when we go places, so they might eat a little early, or start their next nap a little late)
11:15 ish to 1 pm- Nap in cribs
1 pm- Wake Eat Play
2:15 ish to 4 pm- Nap in cribs
4 pm- Wake Eat Play (often this becomes our daily walk time instead of playtime)
5:15 ish- 6 pm- Catnap in cribs or swing
6:45 pm- start bedtime routine: bath every other night, lotion massage, pjs, pick out a book
7 pm- bedtime bottle, story, prayers, then cribs (right now, they sleep pretty much until we wake them, with a few small stirrings sometimes around 6 am. For that we follow the pick up/put down method I talked about earlier this week. If they wake in the middle of the night, which happens still every once in a while and usually on days they ate less during the day- we assume they are hungry and feed them. )

If they wake early from a nap within a half hour of their next feeding, I go with it and then just adjust the rest of the day and eventually we get back on track. Same thing with staying asleep at the end of a nap- if they are both still asleep, I'll let them continue for 15-30 minutes before waking both of them up. Most times, they wake themselves right around the right time.

I've heard that once they are sleeping completely through the night, not waking early for naps, and have a wake time of 2 hours, it is around then to transition to a 4 hour schedule from the 3 hour schedule we currently do. Since Sam and Anna only do one of those 3, I think we have a while before that happens.

Seriously- adopting a schedule like this was life altering in good ways when we first began. I can't imagine continuing on with twins without a schedule- around 6 weeks when we were figuring out Sam and Anna's reflux, they were both fed on demand individually and thus slept independently as a result. It was so chaotic and insane, I really couldn't keep track of who ate what when, and who slept when and for how long. I thought I liked all the one-on-one time I got each day back then... but they hardly ever slept at the same time, and I like being able to catch my breath, eat, get dressed, and go to the bathroom even more. Now I find different ways to create one-on-one time. Like when one's in a swing/bouncer, I interact completely with the other for a little bit, then switch positions. When I think about those helter skelter days back then, I shudder internally now. My goodness- how did we do it?