Thursday, May 22, 2008

How's the Sleep Going?

So the girls are almost 6 weeks old and I thought I would share how the nighttime sleep thing is going. The whole "waking up every three hours" is definitely ringing true in our household. A typical night for us begins with a feeding around 10 pm. I nurse both girls at the same time and then sometimes we follow this with 2 oz. of formula each. We burp both girls, swaddle them, and then put them to bed. This usually goes really well (with the occasional grunting from the girls before they fall asleep). We are usually in bed by 11 pm. Then I am awakened around 1:30 am by one girl. It is usually only one of them (the other one still sleeping peacefully) and so then I change the awake baby's diaper and put her back in her crib. She cries and cries, but I have to wake up the sleeping baby to change her diaper, too. All the literature that I read says to wake the sleeping baby, too. Anyway, I quickly change the second baby's diaper. I then nurse both babies simultaneously. This is only tricky when one detaches before the other and needs to burp before the other baby is ready. Usually what I do is detach the other and burp them both, then I am able to have them both finish the feeding. By feeding them at the same time I can usually finish up the feeding in 30 minutes and then I am back in bed within 45 minutes. If I feed them separately it would take much longer. After this 1:30 am feeding back to bed by a little after 2 am, I am usually awakened around 4:30 am. Again, usually only by one baby. The procedure repeats itself. The girls have not been able to sync up in the night yet. I'm beginning to think that Raina is ready to sleep longer at night, but I haven't given it a try yet. If she is not ready and I wait it out to see if she is, then she'll wake up soon after I hit the bed and I am not ready to give up more sleep at this point. My maybe 2 hour spurts of sleep are very important to me! I think around 8 weeks I'll give it a try. That is when Barrett started sleeping through the night, so maybe one (or both...if I'm lucky) will start to at that point, also. We'll just have to wait and see.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have been VERY curious about the nights and they sound just as rough as I imagined....you are such a trooper!!! You were lucky w/Barrett sleeping through the night at 8 weeks, Tatym still wakes after about 5 hrs to eat but really, those first 5 hrs seem glorious compared to what she was doing when she was younger. Really, one baby seems easy compared to what you are going through. I continue to be SO impressed w/you :) Love, Melissa

Jocelyn Edin said...

Yep, you are amazing. Love the play-by-play details and I know your bloggies will appreciate them too, especially Kristie :) I have to admit though, the 'maybe-2-hour chunks of sleep' don't get me that excited for baby #2. Ah well...

Kate and Matt said...

Britta-yowser honey! Hang in there you will get sleep soon!