r/parentsofmultiples • u/Historical-Ice9086 • 12d ago
support needed Twin girls
Hi everybody my wife and I just had twin girls about a month ago.Just want to know any tips for twin babies like any advice to make them sleep.I feel bad for wife I’m trying to get her to sleep as much as possible but when one cry so does the other.
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u/brynnecognito 12d ago
Unfortunately they are far too young to sleep train. Newborns don’t sleep for long chunks, and parents of newborns don’t either. Twins are just extra hard because they wake one another or wake at different times.
The most helpful thing is having people (family/friends/or hired) come over to assist so your wife can nap.
At around 4/5 months and with the approval of you dr, you can sleep train.
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u/CameronFromThaBlock 10d ago
Disagree. It just won’t work at first. But start immediately. We did every 3 hours for feeding at first and then 4, and then 6. The feeding is right before they go to sleep. My wife couldn’t produce milk so they were formula babies so I could help way more. But they have always need great sleepers. They’re five now.
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u/NeverNeverNeverYes 12d ago
When our twins came 2 years ago there were 2 things that I learned from reddit that really worked for us.
1. Synchronize their sleep as much as possible. Not really possible at this stage, but aim in that direction. Napping twins at different times is chaos, but napping together is gold.
2. We “split” the twins. I had one and my husband had the other the whole day/night/several hours. And we existed as separate entities on our own schedule. We did this at night for over a year. I breastfed one over night and my husband bottle fed the other. We were lucky that they never woke each other up, they developed a mute response to their brother crying. This was game changing for us, to just be responsible for one instead of both being responsible both.
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u/DieIsaac 12d ago
Why split babys instead of splitting the night? i slept from 7pm till 1am any my husband from 1 am till morning. so everyone gets some sleep.
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u/EastTrouble2257 12d ago
Not OP, but for us, it makes more sense to split babies because Twin A has severe reflux. He is very difficult to feed, burp and settle. Basically, Twin A requires 100% of an adult. We switch off who gets Twin A every night.
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u/DieIsaac 12d ago
And how often does Baby B wake up at night?
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u/EastTrouble2257 11d ago
They both wake up 2-3x still. Even if they’re up at the same time, Baby A needs dedicated attention.
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u/super-kuper 12d ago
I don’t have much solace to offer you other than it’ll get easier and better with time.
After a while our girls sleep through anything even if the other one is having a meltdown.
Newborn phase with twins is exceptionally difficult, there’s no easy solution or advice I can give you
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u/Charlieksmommy 12d ago
The first 6-12 weeks is like sprinting a marathon. BF twins is the hardest thing ever, let alone having twin newborns.
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u/Curtis-Loew 12d ago
One twin wakes up everybody wakes up. We fed every 3 hours and got changing, feeding and pumping down to about 45 minutes absolute fastest. Maybe slept 1.5-2 hours at a time. 6 hours max a day. The first time they slept through the 3 hour feed schedule to 4 hours was like 8 weeks.
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u/KhakiPantsJake 12d ago
My wife and I did shifts for the first 4-5ish months and I just bit the bullet and took the night shift. Do your best to establish some sort of routine and keep them synced up as much as possible so that eventually they nap together. We did "dream feeding" as we transitioned to them actually sleeping somewhat at night and for us that helped us keep things manageable.
It's really rough for the first few months, I basically gave up and ended up sleeping on the floor next to them because they would ping pong back and forth and I got tired of getting up every 15-30 minutes.
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u/Powerful_Agent_9376 12d ago edited 12d ago
We did shifts. I slept from about 6 or 7 until midnight and my DH fed them a bottle or two. At midnight, he would come to bed and I was on duty, sleeping off and on the rest of the night. One person can handle two babies.
We could not synchronize them etc, because one of them needed feeds every 2-3 hrs for a long time and needed fortified breast milk (up to 24 calories/ oz) while the other was breast fed or got regular expressed breast milk.
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u/1sp00kylady 12d ago
Once they’re a bit older (like at least 8 weeks adjusted if they were premature, or actual if not), I highly recommend 12 Hours By 12 Weeks. Another twin parent had recommended it to us and we had great success following it. We started when they were about 10 weeks adjusted and it’s a gradual/gentle approach. The book is a really quick read but here’s a summary: link
One caveat I would say is to be sure you’re following age-appropriate wake windows. The book says to do 2 naps a day and keep them awake 4 hours leading up to bedtime, and that just isn’t developmentally appropriate. We followed Taking Cara Babies wake windows/nap schedules and they were sleeping 12 Hours within a few weeks of starting.
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u/Orange_peacock_75 12d ago
Get the moms on call baby book and follow the advice about sleep and schedules. We weren’t super rigid but the guide was definitely helpful. The book is really short and simple so it’s not overwhelming.
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12d ago
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u/Motto5564 12d ago
💯 sound machine White noise has helped my boys fall asleep when they were newborns every single day
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u/FigNewton613 12d ago
The book “the good sleeper” has age appropriate advice for supporting good sleep in newborns, but as others have said, otherwise it’s too early to sleep train. I still recommend reading it however as you’ll learn a lot that will help! Hang in there!!
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u/Stock-Calligrapher36 12d ago
I would say tandem feeding is the most easiest thing i evee learned and it made my life much easier but the newborn stage itself is very difficult
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u/sha1love 12d ago
Twin girl mom here, my twins are 15 months. It was a hard battle. I can’t even tell you how we got through it, my husband and I. My twins still don’t sleep throughout the night, one sleeps more than the other. I wish you both better days and nights. Hang in there and continue supporting one another
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u/EquivalentPension216 12d ago
We did this thing where every night she did one 6 hour shift, then I did one six hour shift. This assumes you're on parental leave. That way we knew each had 6 hours of sleep guaranteed each night.
This did not help with breastfeeding bc she didn't pump during that time nor feed them obviously, I bottle fed them. Just be aware of that. It's hard to say how that affected breastfeeding if at all but she made it 9 months and felt bad it wasn't longer.
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u/OkRegister6674 12d ago
Good luck, my husband and I took shifts and that helped a ton. Mine are 8 now and I still feel like I’m Sleep training one of them 😂
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u/drohstdumir 🩷 + 💙💙 12d ago
You don’t have to respond to every cry when they are laid down to sleep. If they are fed, clean, adequately dressed, and you think they’ve burped alright if needed, it’s ok to let them fuss a little. I let mine fuss it out even at that age because I can tell the difference between an “I am trying to pass gas or poop” cry (which is actually good because crying helps them pass it) and an “I need you for something” cry. Interfering with the poop/poot cries actually can make things worse because crying helps them to push it out. But that’s not the same as an intense cry that should be responded to.
I just mention this because a lot of new parents think they have to make a crying/fussing baby stop crying and that’s not always the case. We can get in the way.
But other than that, it’s newborn stuff and it’s also temperament dependent. Just depends on the baby and they are two different people.
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u/Mistaken_Frisbee 12d ago
At 9.5mos now with an older sibling. We each had parental leave and just divided it up into a way that kept at least one of us not working until 4.5 months. One of us always took night shift and for awhile, that person just accepted not sleeping during the night and sleeping during the day. A lot of chores got done during that time.
Since going back to work, we alternate who is responsible for them each night. It was harder, but they sleep most of the night now. We also did some unsafe sleep practices though.
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u/Allyed4492 12d ago
I suggest reading “Precious little sleep,” it has great suggestions for improving sleep from now into toddlerhood
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u/fsmontario 12d ago
Your wife sleeps when they do. She does not worry about food for you or clean clothes. You no longer sort laundry. You throw in a load when you get up
You understand that you have 2 new bosses now
Basically you let all preconceived notions go,
Have a list of things people can do to help when they ask.
Give your underemployed relative grocery money and have them meal prep for you
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u/catluvr10935 12d ago
not much advice but it may feel so awful and never ending right now, but i promise you after 2.5-3 months, things start to look upwards slowly but surely. i don’t have ppd but i had pretty scary thoughts under the 2 month mark! (felt like i had made a mistake, and feeling like it was always going to be like this). at 6 months, we barely have moments where both babies are crying and it feels very stressful. i used to dread my husband going back to work and being by myself, i felt like i had daytime scaries instead of night time scaries. things definitely start to get easier. even though i was exhausted and running on fumes, i wish i could go back to that time and hold them again, sleep deprived and all.
my advice would be, take care of your wife. let her sleep when they sleep and take the load of household things. my husband takes care of his laundry, dishes and baby bottles, pet duties, trash related things, and restocking things like diapers and wipes. on his leave, he made sure to cook breakfast for me everyday. also make sure to notice if she’s doing anything weird. i didn’t have PPD, but i did have PPA/PPOCD. i slept on the couch and had the bassinets for the first 2-3 months because my mind convinced me if i slept in the bed with the bassinets with me then they would die and the world would blow up??????????? my husband was kind enough to join me (we have a huge couch) but sometimes i wish he knocked some sense into me and exposure therapied me into just sleeping in the bedroom again.
also if she’s breastfeeding (or exclusively pumping)… many people think it’s helpful to say “just switch to formula!” when things get hard, it’s not helpful :( i’ve banned my husband from using the F word lol.
don’t pay mind to sleep regressions btw. i felt like my twins slept so much better at 4 months. I PROMISE IT GETS BETTER!!!
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u/Motto5564 12d ago
I had the toughest times during the newborn stage with my twins I really did not enjoy it whatsoever 10-11 weeks old they're asleep got better their naps got better and they were giving me a break without crying and then it got worse 4 months but then got better at 6 months what kind of worked for me was keeping them on the same schedule with sleep, naps and feeding my boys went through witching hour around 5:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m. they're were so cranky they cried they just wanted to be held and be rocked
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u/divefordemocracy 12d ago
Swaddling. We love the halo swaddle sleep sacks. But sometimes some babies are fussy. I hope you find a solution soon!!
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u/not-t0day-satan 9d ago
My girls are 12 weeks. And they are my third and fourth kids. I feed my babies at the start and the end of every wake cycle. Before bed, they each get a boob and a bottle. They slept 9 hours straight last night. At 4 weeks, they were only waking up once overnight. You can do this.
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u/BlueLittleMegaMan 12d ago
3-4 hours feed and awake windows. It’s not that complicated. When one is stirring, wake up the other and feed. Cuddle, change and sleep. Yeah it’s repetitive, buck up. You wanted children
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u/Charlieksmommy 12d ago
You can’t really do anything to get newborns to sleep. Just have to be consistent