Sleep Training Continues

I was so hopeful last night. Both babies had napped appropriately during the day. They ate at 8pm while I was at Zumba, and Blue got them into their crib by 9pm and read them a story. When I got home a little after 9 he was coming out of their room after his first revisit to pat and reinsert their pacifiers. Periwinkle started crying again at 9:15, and I went up at 9:17. I did a sway and shhh with her and got her eyes looking very sleepy. Indigo was awake but calm, but I did a sway and shhh with him too, mainly because my time with both of them was so limited yesterday because I decided to prioritize ME one day a week and do Zumba. I'm allowed. Still feeling a little guilty...

But in any event. I got both of them sleepy and then went to take a shower. When I got out around 9:45pm, Blue reported that one of them (he didn't check) had been halfheartedly crying but that they were both now sleeping. They worked it out and put themselves to sleep. Go babies!

I was in bed by 10:45pm and asleep soon after, absolutely exhausted from the night before and from Zumba. I'm surprisingly not sore today. I was awoken at 2:30am by Peri crying. I listened for a minute before I realized she wasn't crying so much as complaining, almost "talking" to her brother, who soon started responding. I decided that they were not hungry, just awake. I went in to their room and found them in each others' faces, having moved closer together so that they were now kicking each other. It's definitely time to split them up into separate cribs...

Periwinkle reenacts how I felt upon being woken up at 2:30am by her chit-chat.

I did the sway and shhh again with both of them and got them both sleeping again. Victory! (stupid me prematurely declaring success) I went back to bed and got maybe a half hour of sleep before they started up again. This time sway and shhh wasn't as effective, even though they still didn't seem too distressed. I got Peri asleep again but not Indigo. I changed his diaper and hoped that would do the trick. No go. More swaying and shhing and butt-patting and finally he was calm, at least. Back to bed with me. Twenty minutes later, so now almost 4am, and Periwinkle starts crying for real. This is more what I am used to. I declared defeat and went to make bottles. But I think I'm okay with that, because this time she did sound hungry. Indigo was still just looking around, calm, so we fed him as well.

And then neither of them wanted to go back to sleep. Blue somehow got them sleeping. I'm not sure how, since I conked out almost immediately in desperate need of some zzzzs. I don't think it took him longer than 15 minutes though, so I suppose that's not terrible. They aren't sleepy newborns anymore, after all, so we can't expect them to immediately fall asleep when we lay them down like they used to.

So thus far, I am happy that they napped better, and that I am getting better at reading their cries. I would like to eliminate that 2:30am "playtime" wake time, though. I think it is likely a result of them still being unused to their earlier bedtime and I am hoping that a few more days of this new routine will get them sleeping through until they are hungry, probably around 3:30am or 4am. If a few more days doesn't do the trick, I might try that dreamfeed idea when we go to bed around 10pm.

A work in progress...

And once we get them used to this bedtime, we'll start moving it even earlier in 15 minute increments. They should have an easier time adjusting to that than to this bigger jump from 11pm to 9pm. If daylight savings time doesn't totally eff it all up.