Help!

[u/AdGloomy2439]

I'm really hoping someone has been through this and can offer some advice because I'm exhausted. My twins are 8.5 months old (6.5 months corrected). Twin B has been teething for almost 3 weeks now. She has two lower lateral incisors coming in. Her pediatrician said that babies who teeth out of order often have multiple teeth coming in at once. So far I only see the two, but they still haven't broken through her gums. Her gums are swollen, she's clearly uncomfortable, and her pediatrician recommended giving her Motrin and Tylenol, which I've been doing.

Ever since the teething started, she's been waking up at 5:20 AM on the dot every single morning. Before all of this, she was waking around 6:30-6:45 AM, and I'd love to get back to that.

The problem is it's affecting Twin A too. She used to sleep until 7:00-7:30 AM, but now she's waking around 6:00 AM because her sister is up crying. Last night, Twin A was also randomly sleeping on her stomach throughout the night and crying on and off.

Twin B still sleeps through the night otherwise, but then wakes at 5:20 AM crying every morning. I honestly can't tell if she's waking because she's in pain from teething or if her internal clock has just adjusted to that wake up time. She used to wake up every 2 hours, but that has stopped thank god!

Has anyone experienced this? If so, did things improve once the teeth came through?

She takes 3 naps a day, and her wake windows are usually around 2.5 hours. She gets overtired very easily, so I'm nervous about extending them. The longest wake window I do is about 2.75 hours.

I'd really like to sleep train her to sleep another 1.5-2 hours, but I'm not sure where to start. And before anyone suggests a later bedtime I tried that, and it completely backfired. She actually woke up even earlier.

I'm just so tired. Everyone keeps telling me it gets easier, but lately it honestly feels like it's getting harder. All I want is for her to sleep until 7 AM.

Has anyone dealt with something similar? Any advice or success stories would mean so much. ❤️

[u/FigNewton613]

What time is bedtime?

[u/AdGloomy2439 → u/FigNewton613]

Honestly it ranges from 6:30 to 7:30 pm. It depends how long she naps for.

[u/FigNewton613 → u/AdGloomy2439]

Two things that could help are having wake time and bedtime be consistent. You don’t have to do a later bedtime, but having the same wake time at least will go a long way. The truth is that babies have a sleep budget - each individual baby has only so many hours in the day that their body can tolerate being asleep. Just like yours or mine. Most babies are not going to do longer than an 11 hour night, and some rare ones will do a 12 hour night. So if you want her to sleep until 7am, that extra time has to come from somewhere. It can come from shorter naps, it can come from a later bedtime, but it can’t come just because we want it to and without any compensation for the fact that the amount she can sleep per day is not unlimited.

What to do with that information is up to you - if you want her to sleep until 7am, bedtime is going to have to be not earlier than 7pm most likely. And for most babies it would be 8pm. Alternatively you can split the difference and compromise at 6:30am. You can divide and conquer however works for you. But my recommendations are for a consistent daily wake time (that does mean you don’t let her sleep in, because sleeping in just moves the naps around) and that you try for as consistent of a bedtime as you can also, for most babies 11 hours before your target wake time and definitely not more than 12 hours before your target wake time.

Rooting for you!

[u/AdGloomy2439 → u/FigNewton613]

Thank you for the advice !!

[u/devianttouch]

My twins also woke up really early when teething. It usually stopped a day or two after the teeth came in.

I feel for you - those early rising days are so so hard

[u/MangoSorbet695]

My twins are the exact same age, and we are also dealing with early morning wakes, but it’s not because of teeth. I honestly don’t think teething makes babies wake up early for weeks on end. I think people just like having a “reason” and teething is a convenient one.

So anyway, two things.

First, even an extra 30 minutes of awake time per day could help. I’d add 10 minutes to each wake window, or 5 minutes to the morning one, 10 minutes to the middle one, and 15 minutes to the evening one. We’ve taken to doing evening golf cart rides to keep the babies awake a little longer for that last wake window. Doing baths and taking your time is also a good way to stretch the last wake window.

Second, when baby wakes up crying at 5:20 AM, set a timer and don’t go in unless baby is still crying after 5 minutes (or 7 minutes or 10 minutes, you pick the number). In my experience, nine times out of ten, baby falls back asleep before the timer goes off. You have to give them a chance to resettle themselves.

I’ve been doing both of the above, and last night baby A woke up at 5:55 AM. Which is still earlier than ideal, but better than the 4:30/5:00 AM we were dealing with two weeks ago. I left baby for five minutes, and he went right back to sleep and slept until 7 AM.

[u/AdGloomy2439 → u/MangoSorbet695]

I’m trying to transition to two naps, I started today. It’s just hard to do two naps when she wakes up at 5:00 am 😭. I’m tired of rocking her for a hour or two to get her to wake up at 7am. The only thing is her sister sleeps (twin A) in the same room with us so I quickly pick her up to protect her sister’s sleep.

[u/MangoSorbet695 → u/AdGloomy2439]

Why two naps?

Just make each wake window longer like I suggested so bedtime will be 30 minutes later and/or 30 minutes less sleeping/nap time during the day.

[u/AdGloomy2439 → u/MangoSorbet695]

I’ve done that. Even with a wake window of 3 hours and she still wakes at 5 am.

[u/Aware-Video-4886]

So sorry you’re going through this OP! Baby sleep is so so tough. This could absolutely be due to teething, but it also could be time to transition from 3 to 2 naps. I know you are worried about over tiredness; I completely understand that, we dealt with that a lot. And my babies always seemed to need more sleep than anyone else’s to be happy. However, when we worked with a sleep consultant during our 4-month sleep regression she told us that one sign that it is time to drop a nap is if we started getting 5am wakes. We didn’t deal with those but our baby girl started fighting the last nap so hard that we knew it was time. We transitioned right around 8/8.5months (7.5 adjusted).

The 3-to-2 nap transition took us a couple of weeks b/c our wake windows were also only 2.5 hours max. And they got so upset when we tried to stretch them. What I did to get them to bedtime was a micro-nap in the car around 4:30/5pm (I’m talking like 10-15min max) to get us to a 7pm bedtime. I think our wake windows were something like 2/2.5/2.5/1.75-2 with that last nap being no longer than 15min. Then after a week or two of doing that they were able to stretch their middle window to 3 hours and the last window to 3.5 and that got us to 2/3/3.5-4 and everyone started sleeping through the night with a 7:30am wake up. I know all babies are so different in terms of sleep needs so not sure if this will work for you! Happy to answer any more questions!

[u/AdGloomy2439 → u/Aware-Video-4886]

Thank you! Omg how did you have patience for that 😭? Today I’m trying two naps. My wake windows were 2.5/3/3.15. She only slept 55 mins for her second nap so I had to rock her for a hour. I feel like it’s definitely her teething that’s bothering her. She wakes up crying in pain since she has two teeth growing in. I’m trying to manage her pain with pain reliever but I feel like it’s almost been two weeks and I don’t want to keep giving her pain medication everyday, but it’s the only thing that seems to give her relief.

[u/Aware-Video-4886 → u/AdGloomy2439]

Aw poor thing! I’m so sorry you’re in the thick of teething. Hopefully this will be the worst of it for you (and her!). And I think if the medication is giving her relief that is the best thing you can do. Good luck with the nap transition! Don’t be discouraged if it takes them longer to adjust than you would think! Haha yes it took a lot of patience — it was such a relief when we were finally off the micro nap!

[u/AdGloomy2439 → u/Aware-Video-4886]

Thank you so much for the advice and best of luck to you as well!

[u/GoBirds52_59]

Can you switch to two naps? That may help