BABYWISE AND MULTIPLES QUESTIONS
steffie said…
What’s the best way to get triplets on the eat/wake/sleep cycle? They have been on a 4 hour feeding schedule since birth and I REALLY don’t want to mess with that. They are gaining weight very well and are used to eating every 4 hours, not to mention with 3 babies this is just how we have to manage it. My question is about the sleeping. The times just don’t add up. We feed them then let them play/cuddle/etc. and they are ready to nap after about an hour and a half. We then put them down to nap. They nap anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half. That leaves at least an hour before their next feed. What do I do? I did try a week doing the 3 hour feeds and it was a nightmare. They ate less and slept less at night. I don’t know how to make them sleep longer, but I cannot let them cry in their cribs for over an hour. First and foremost because they wake each other up and I have two or three screaming babies. When they wake up an hour early or more I can put them in their swings. We then feed the at the normal time and they are immediately sleepy because they’ve been awake for a long time. We’ve been doing babywise for about 5 weeks. They are almost 14 weeks, 7 weeks adjusted. They do sleep at night from 7:30-10:00, wake up and feed, 10:30-around 2:00 when they wake up and feed. I dreamfeed them in bed at that time. They then wake up at 6:00 hungry. We put them right back down and they sleep until 9:00. Any help would be so appreciated!
March 2, 2008 12:01 PM
Plowmanators said…
Have you seen this post:Waking Early From Naps/Won’t Fall Asleep For Naps: http://babywisemom.blogspot.com/2008/01/waking-early-from-napswont-fall-asleep.html ? Normally, my advice would be to feed when they wake up because they have taken a good nap, but you have tried that without success. You might try adjusting waketime a bit. Often, moving the nap earlier by 5-15 minutes can make a huge difference in length of the nap. But, the longest they should sleep is 2.5 hours. If you moved waketime to an hour and fifteen minutes, they would still be up early (if they slept that long), but only 15 minutes early instead. See this post for more on that idea: Easy Nap Fix: http://babywisemom.blogspot.com/2008/01/easy-nap-fix.html You have a tricky situation because you are dealing with three individuals. They won’t necessarily all need the same nap length and/or waketime length. You can also easily have them waking each other. If one has a rough nap, they can all have a rough nap :)You might need to wait it out until they are old enough to stay awake longer, but some babies might take some time to get there (my 10 month old still has 1.5 hour waketime). I would take a look at the two posts I listed, try some things, and see what happens. Good luck!
March 2, 2008 9:38 PM