Sleep

Obviously, I absolutely love my twins, but needless to say, I don't love their sleep habits! Ethan has STTN maybe two times and Chase had a three week stretch of STTN at 5.5 months. He got a cold a Christmas and hasn't slept through since then. They are awesome nappers- 2-3 naps a day for 1-2 hours. We have a nice bedtime routine and they go to sleep with no issues. It's the night wakings that kill us. Between both boys, we're up anymore from 2-6 times a night. I'm not opposed to CIO, but wanted to avoid it if possible. Chase sleeps best swaddled (at 7.5 months still!). But he's started rolling over while swaddled, so it was time to transition to arms free. I read somewhere that there is a sweet spot timing wise between 6-9 months to do CIO. My mommy instinct has been telling me that now is the time. They're not hungry at night (they suck on their bottles for a few seconds, then don't want it), they're not sick, not teething, both boys can get pacifiers into their mouths, they can roll over in their cribs to find a comfy sleeping position. So we decided to go with it.

I don't know if what we're doing is CIO or not. I'm not concerned about what it is as long as it works for us. At this point, we've decided that we're not picking the boys up in the middle of the night. Once they cry, we go in, soothe, get them calmed down, and leave again. They both prefer their sides or bellies for sleeping, so we'll get them into those positions and cross our fingers that they fall asleep. So far, so good. We had one rough morning at 5am when Chase would go back to sleep for 5 minutes then wake up again, but since that, its been improving drastically! Last night, Ethan STTN for the second time ever and Chase only woke up once and only needed 15 minutes of going in and soothing before he fell back to sleep. Chase has a lovey blanket and its made a big difference in helping him fall asleep now that he's arms free. Tonight is the first night since being arms free that he didn't need me to go in to soothe him at all!

Adam and I are ready for a full night's sleep again (maybe we're just dreaming though!). It's been about a year since I've had a decent night of sleep. I won't know what to do with myself when it happens!

Here are my sleeping angels!