At a Loss

Since probably last Wednesday, Indigo has been a real PITA at bedtime. We do the usual routine: bottle at 7:30, PJs, diaper change, into the sleep sacks, a bit of swaying and singing, then "goodnight."

Minutes later he's crying at the top of his lungs. We give him a few minutes but he doesn't calm down. One of us goes up to pat him, give him back his paci, try to get him to fall asleep. Sometimes we leave the room with him asleep. Ten minutes later, he's awake and crying again. Rinse and repeat.

"Your turn!" has become an all-too-familiar refrain in our house.

One evening, I picked him up during probably his fifth crying fit and he just collapsed against me and was asleep in an instant (which I admit I totally loved). I held him for a few minutes then put him down. Not a minute later, crying.

How could I NOT pick him up when he looks this upset? That lower lip quiver gets me every time.

It all usually stops at 10:30pm, give or take a few minutes.

Blue wants to just  cave (I don't blame him) and not even put them to bed until then, except that then they'd just be napping downstairs because they ARE tired, and Periwinkle usually goes to bed fine unless her naps were horrendous (or like yesterday when she took a four-hour nap at daycare--way too long). I don't want to mess up the progress we've made with her or give up on the healthier early bedtime.

I've heard suggestions ranging from "He's teething, so wait it out" to "Try an earlier bedtime, he might be too overtired by 8pm to go to sleep easily." He does have his hands in his mouth all the time these days, but teething rings don't really seem to help him. Plus he naps fine. Although, he has been more cranky since about the same time last week, so this could be the reasoning behind it. He's had crying fits during the day when he usually pretty much NEVER cries. And maybe at night he knows he won't be getting comforted all night so he cries. Maybe he just misses us during the week because he spends most of his time at daycare so he wants to be held by us (rip my heart out, kiddo).

It was working. We had a good thing going. What the hell happened in the past week?

The good news is that once finally asleep (which often involves him sleeping for 20 minutes, giving one last cry, then falling back to sleep for good) he sleeps all night. We haven't had a real nightwaking or feeding since Saturday, March 23. So that's been awesome.

Suggestions welcome.

Another Doozie

Last night was a bit better, but not great. We got some longer chunks of sleep in, but it took over an hour to get Periwinkle back to sleep after she woke up at 10:30pm (JUST as we were going to bed... she knew!). There are just so many variables I'm not sure what to think.

1. She still isn't feeling great -- she is eating less per feeding and spitting up a bit more than usual. Her brother, on the other hand, has shown himself quite capable of having a few 8oz bottles a day. Yikes!

2. Her naps are not long enough. Three 45-minute naps do not a well-sleeping baby make. I'm hoping that we can get her to nap well over the weekend. The daycare might just not have the manpower to devote to getting her to nap longer when she needs a little help getting back to sleep during sleep-cycle transitions (which happen about 45 minutes in).

3. Is it time to get rid of the Woombie already? She seems to want to gnosh on her hands, but when we release her arms and let her, she isn't satisfied and still wants the pacifier she dropped as she drifted to sleep. And she doesn't have the hand coordination yet to pick it up and get it in her mouth herself. Which brings us to...

4. Time to get rid of pacifier dependency? She had been doing fine with falling asleep without it, but this week she seems to need it again. Maybe because she's still not feeling well?

I just don't know. I figure we'll give her a few more days to get to 100% health before we mess with her routine again. Part of me wonders if we messed with something that wasn't broken when we moved their bedtime earlier... but other parts of me wonder if they need an even earlier bedtime. According to many things I've read and heard anecdotally from other parents, too late of a bedtime can lead to multiple nightwakings, which is what's happening this week. Sigh. At a loss. Trial and error might be the only way to figure this one out.

I'm just glad Indigo is still doing pretty well, although he did have a brief wakeup around 1:30am. He also seems to want to nibble on his hands, so it might be time for him to ditch the swaddle/Woombie as well. Maybe I can sell them (the Woombies, not the babies) on eBay? Do people still use eBay?

At least they are cute. Even if Periwinkle looks a little moody.

Day 71 Project365. Yes, they are part Irish, among many other things. My little mutt babies!

Sleep Training

For a while there, I didn't think we'd need to deal with sleep training. The kids seemed to go to bed just fine after a 10pm feeding (so around 11pm), wake up at 4:30am to eat, then sleep until woken up around 7:30am to go to daycare or hang out around the house if it's the weekend. Then two things happened.

1. I realized I wasn't getting to bed until nearly midnight because I'd be doing all my stuff after they went to bed, which made for Zombie Red once I went back to work. I get up at 6am to be at work by 8am. Figure six hours minus the 4:30am feeding equals about five hours of sleep. That's just not liveable for me.

Probably how I look these days.

2. I did a lot of reading and talking to other moms, and their kids were averaging about 11 hours of sleep at night. Ours were averaging about 8. This was likely creating a vicious cycle where they were then overtired the next day, napped erratically, got even more overtired, then didn't sleep as much at night, and so on. And napping does not have the same restorative features as nightsleep. Also, as the saying goes, "Sleep begets sleep." I.e., get your kids napping well and they will sleep better at night. And if they go to bed earlier at night, they will, quite ironically, go longer before waking up and sometimes will actually start sleeping through the night, because they are better rested and thus sleep more soundly.

So, our mission is two-pronged:

1. Get the kids napping more regularly. No more than two hours should pass between them waking and them going back into nap-land. I'm sure the daycare knows this, but judging from their recent naps, the babies are going too long in between naps during the day.

2. Work back their bedtime from 11pm to 8pm. If that works well, perhaps even try and move it to 7pm, which would probably be best for them. It would mean I would never see them, pretty much, until weekends, so that would be a bit rough on me.

So the plan:

I'm going to mention to daycare, as non-judgmentally as possible, that we really want to work on naptimes and wake times.  It also seems that Periwinkle has a tougher time transitioning between sleep cycles and they might be getting her up when she starts to cry about 45 minutes into her nap. Instead she might just need some patting and shushing to help her fall asleep again for another sleep cycle. I'm going to work on this on weekends before I bring it up at daycare. For now we'll have them work on keeping wake times to two hours or less.

As for the second part, it's worked out pretty well that the babies are now eating around 8:30am, 12:30pm, and 4:30pm. Which leads to a last feeding around 8:30pm and a middle-of-the-night feeding around 3am. Last night Periwinkle was out like a light at 9pm. Indigo had a harder time, but he was the one with the worst napping yesterday so I chalked it up to overtiredness. He did eventually fall asleep for good at 10:08pm after a few cycles of us going up to calm him, rock him, and give him his pacifier back. The last time he cried, I could tell it was different. He would cry somewhat half-heartedly for a few moments, then be quiet for perhaps 20 seconds, then cry again. After a few minutes of that he finally quieted for good and fell asleep. I'm hoping he'll get better at calming himself like he did that last time, and that if we just give him five minutes to cry and then self-soothe he'll put himself back to sleep. It is SO hard to listen to him cry, though, and even though I say we're waiting five minutes, we never make it that long. Luckily Periwinkle can sleep through his crying! This part of sleep training is a work in progress. We still need to push their bedtime another hour earlier but I will let them adjust to 9pm first. We'll get there, little by little.

Day 61 of Project365

Then of course last night Periwinkle was crying at 2:15am, and Indigo woke up around then too, which he rarely does. We tried in vain to get them back to sleep before caving at 3am and feeding them. They both then resisted going back to sleep, and it took about twenty minutes of us going in and calming them (they alternated whose turn it was to cry, which was somewhat helpful) to finally fall asleep again. It's pretty rare that they resist going back to sleep in the middle of the night, so I'm hoping that was just a fluke and not a new normal. I'm sure it has something to do with their new, earlier bedtime, so perhaps in a few days they'll have adjusted and will drift back to sleep like they used to. I ordered Indigo one of the Woombie things Periwinkle has been using this week because his size small swaddling sleep sack just doesn't keep his arms from flailing the way the newborn size did, which I think makes it harder for him to fall asleep. I'm hoping, anyways!

Another thing we might try is a dreamfeed before we go to bed. Essentially you get them to eat while they are still in their crib asleep. This might push the MOTN feeding from 3am to 5am or something like that. We'll see if we feel the need to do that though. Just another tool in our arsenal.

Unless you are a parent of an infant, this was all probably horrible boring for you. If you are my parents or in-laws, this might help you understand what we're now trying to do for next time you are babysitting! I promise I'm not crazy (although Blue probably thinks I am) and there is a lot of evidence behind this whole "early to bed means better sleeping, happier babies" thing.

Cleaning House

Literally. I put the babies in the pack n play despite their protests so I could vacuum. I looked over two minutes later and they were sound asleep. I might have to vacuum on a daily basis now!

The floor in our closet is also getting some extra love, unfortunately because one of the cats keeps peeing in it. And on the bathmat. And on one of the baby blankets. And on the cat bed, which I just ended up tossing because they don't use it anyways. I had been thinking this was a protest against the babies, or a marking of territory, but then my parents mentioned my childhood cat was doing similar things and ended up having a UTI. So, off to the vet we go tomorrow. I actually hope it is a UTI, because that is fixable, and not anti-baby angst, because that we'd just have to wait out. And I already have enough laundry to do without having to redo the sweaters in our closet on a weekly basis. I'll feel terrible that I've been upset at the cats for the past three weeks if it turns out one of them is sick, of course, but it's better than them hating us for bringing home the babies, I suppose.

Okay, off to put away laundry, finally. Got to take advantage of this vacuum-induced naptime!

Naptime

So, along with trying to get them to sleep longer at night (unfortunately we seem to have reverted to 3.5-hour chunks of sleep), I'm also trying to monitor their daytime napping better. Previously, I would just let them doze off in their boppys or on their playmat, but I wasn't tracking how long they were sleeping. Some reading up online has led me to believe that they need more-structured, deeper-sleeping naptimes, which will hopefully translate into longer sleeping periods at night (fingers crossed!). I figure it'll take a week or so to iron it all out, which should be interesting with the holiday coming up...

In short, I think they were getting overtired, especially Periwinkle. So yesterday at the first yawn, up they went into their crib. Indigo wasn't really feeling it, though. He also wasn't feeling the evening nap (between 6 and 7:30), while Periwinkle conked out quite solidly. I'm hoping his lack of napping is why they woke up more frequently at night, but we'll see how it shakes out tonight. I keep optimistically mentally setting their next feeding at four hours, so it's sad when they are crying at three hours. Sometimes we can get away with changing the diaper of the crying baby and getting another 30 minutes or so out of them, but that's not always the issue. Sometimes, one baby is just hungry, and "feed one, feed both."

And now today, Indigo gave the first yawn, so up they went for a nap. It took him about 30 minutes to doze off, but Periwinkle is STILL lying there, burritoed up in her swaddle blanket, looking around the room, cooing, and occasionally trying to break her arms free. I'm thankful she's not screaming, so at least she's having "quiet time." But I'm not looking forward to her behavior later if she does get overtired as a result.

My reading says that the longest babies their age should be awake between naps is 1.5 hours, which is about when I put them down. It also says naps can last 30 minutes to 2 hours. They should be on a cycle of nap, eat, play, nap. Playing can be listening to music, tummy time, having a book read to them, or playing with toys. At this stage of their life, it's usually sitting in the boppy looking around, listening to music, and/or having a book read to them. Yesterday I introduced them to a stuffed animal, which Periwinkle liked to touch and Indigo liked to eat. I'll try to get pictures of that up soon.

Here's a picture of yesterday's boppy time:

This is one of very few times they will be in matching outfits. Periwinkle is in one of Indigo's old outfits he outgrew, and which he happened to have in the 0-3 month size as well. I think they look adorable! Of course, promptly after this photo was taken, Periwinkle spit up on hers so she got an outfit change.

Ah, spit up. Another issue to tackle...

In short, having two babies is hard. You try to get them on the same schedule, but as evidenced by their current "nap," sometimes one baby is tired and the other one isn't, or is at least resistant to napping. In the middle of the night, sometimes one baby is hungry and the other isn't. All we can do is try our best and try not to get too crazy when they don't cooperate.

Good thing they are cute!