Emma is not a great self soother. Consequently the nights can be rough. It's probably our fault really because she was the one who quite regularly would toss up her whole bottle right before bed, so when she made the slightest fuss a couple hours later we'd through her on the breast. She'd eat for a little while, fall asleep we put her back in the crib and then an hour or two later start it all over. We were so concerned with getting her food that I think she didn't get the chance early on to learn to self soothe. Today she's still the one who gets up to eat at night and then eventually have to end up sleeping in our bed because putting her down afterward is tough.

We are gearing up to start working through the "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Twins/Multiples" book and getting formalized nap routines established. We know she's going to be the one we'll have the hardest time with the "Gradual Extinction/Cry it out" on, and we know Grandma (daytime caregiver) is not going to be strong enough to stick with it.

So that being said, what can we do to encourage Emma to learn some self soothing techniques? Lily has her thumb and is a rockstar at it. Abby (aside from some new food trauma - if she's not hungry at the 3-hour mark and recognizes it's time to eat, she starts wailing) is generally pretty easy going and can relax herself.

We know that by getting these naps under control during the day, their nights will be much better. We are still figuring out how to plan the naps and some of the logistics, we keep bumping up against the 2 hour of wakefulness vs. 3-hour feed and waking them up to feed or being less rigid about the 3 hour and if the nap schedule puts them past that then so be it.

It's such a strange thing these multiple babies.

Abby's weight gain has slowed over the last couple of weeks (we started adding a 3oz dream feed to her), which we think is because she loves spending time in the exersaucers probably burning more calories and will stay in them as long as we let her.

I know there's always a lot going on in my posts but oblige me one more question. Do you guys count your feed hours from when they finish or the start time? We've been counting from start time but Abby would prefer to be a 4-hour girl so when hour 2.5 rolls by and sees us start to get into feeding mode she gets upset. So consequently we start feeding her at the 3-hour mark, and she will fight it for an hour, then it chains because that means the next one is only 2 hours away. Oy.

Ryan & Megan
GGG Born 8/9/10 28 weeks 5 days
Lily Ann 2lbs 12oz. 54 days in NICU
Emma Grace 2lbs 6oz. 55 days in NICU
Abigail Rose 2lbs 7oz. 55 days in NICU
http://thesmithfamilytriplets.blogspot.com/

I did cio with my babies. It is hard and dh was not strong enough to continue with it. So now we co sleep. My girls still nurse for naps and night time sleep and my babies are 19 months old. We were always on a 3 hour feed and we started the time from when they started. Sometimes one or two needed to eat every 2.5 hours and if this happened then everyone ate at 2.5 hours. It was rare if we could go much more than 3 hours.

I'm still waiting to see what happens with mine and naps. They are only 4 mos adjusted, so I think that their natural nap habits still have to work themselves out. That said, I started working on the night time sleeping a while ago and they've all been sleeping through the night since about 3 weeks ago. It has been AWESOME and it makes it easier to deal with the weird napping my kids seem to want.

I've been devouring the Healthy Habits(twins) book, but I find myself also running into issues because my kids also still want to be on a 3 hour schedule. So I'm just trying to be flexible with the book, with them, and with myself.

I don't have any advice since I'm just at the beginning of sleep training, but just wanted to commiserate on some of the issues it sounds like we share in common.

http://berubebabies.blogspot.com/

self soothing is such a vital skill to learn for multiples (in my opinion) -- we're just coming out of a long bout of sleep training, so I can try and offer what we did...

We also used "healthy sleep habits..." for our older daughter (now 3) and again with our GGG (now almost 10 months adjusted). First off, I would recommend the regular edition of the book vs the one for multiples. I've read both and the one for singletons gives much more guidance. The gist of the multiples book is to "control the wake time" -- so wake your babies to keep on a schedule. When one sleeps they all sleep - when one wakes they all wake (within 30 minutes or so) to protect the schedule. I found that the regular book was easily adaptable to multiples if you kept those principles in mind.

We began sleep training around 6 months adjusted or so. We went full on extinction as we decided it was going to be faster (this was after much deliberation and a failed trial of gradual extinction). We came up with a simple routine - sing a song, put them in their sleep sacks, read them a book, and put them in their cribs saying it's time for sleep. We also took away their soothers (we did this because we wanted them to learn to self soothe - they were constantly throwing away their soothers and then crying anyway)..In the beginning, they were MAD and cried. It was hard but we kept with it. The crying became less and less and the girls really seemed to start to understand the routine -- when we started to sing the song, they all seemed to know that it was time for bed.

It took us about 2 months to get where we are now. We started working on the night sleep first. I know that sleep begets sleep so we wanted to go for the longest sleep first. We had one babe who would consistently wake after 30-60-90 minutes of sleep and cry. We too would go in, cuddle, soothe etc. until she went back to sleep. With the CIO, this quickly stopped being a problem and she has become one of the best sleepers. With our first (now 3), I would nurse her to sleep and put her down. We ran into problems that she would wake after 30-40 minutes and scream - so I would nurse her again...and again. Similarly, with the CIO method, we kept her awake for feeds, put her down drowsy but awake and helped her to learn to self soothe. It worked - not overnight but it did work!

Regarding naps - we were napping them (GGG) every 2 hours up until 5-6 months adjusted and then we switched to "clock time" and chose times that suited the babes biological cues and our schedule needs (9:30am and 1:30pm) - we were doing a 3rd nap but dropped it at this point and went for an early bedtime of 6:30pm instead.

I found the night time CIO was much easier than the daytime. For some reason our GGG took a long time to get use to napping for a reasonable amount of time. Using the book as our guide, we chose to do our sleep routine and leave them for an hour. If they woke before the hour was up, we let them cry until the hour mark hit.

I know you've posted before about feed schedules -- I found that the 4- hour feed schedule was much more sleep-friendly (at least for our schedule) -- we too have a feeder who routinely would leave a lot of milk however, we kept the schedule and, now that she's bigger, she's grown into the volumes we're asking her to take. We always count our feed schedule from the start of a feed (7:30 - 11:30 - 15:30- 1800 gets squeezed a the end to accommodate bedtime).

In terms of Grandma being the one to manage the CIO -- If I can offer this -- I think the CIO method works well to the extent it is carried out -- if Grandma keeps going in to rescue the babes and you as parents don't, there will be mixed messages sent to the babes and they won't know what is expected of them. I would recommend you both come up with the plan that you are going to use and then write it down on a big piece of paper so that everyone looking after the babies knows how to carry out the sleep routine and wake routine. (sleep was one of my biggest stresses with the babes...can you tell!)

anyway -- I hope I haven't said too much and something in this post is helpful to you.

Good luck --- it will be hard going for a while but it is worth it and it will work!!

Janet
G - 12/07 35 weeks
GGG-04/10 30 weeks

So what do you do if you allot say 1hour for a nap, and they cry until the 58th minute then fall asleep? Do you wake them?

We're also reaching a point where they cannot share a crib much longer and will be moving all the cribs into the nursery. Right now we have one in the living room, our room and the nursery.

I'm thinking our new nap routines will start when we get all the cribs back upstairs in the nursery instead of trying to start a routine now and alter it later.

Ryan & Megan
GGG Born 8/9/10 28 weeks 5 days
Lily Ann 2lbs 12oz. 54 days in NICU
Emma Grace 2lbs 6oz. 55 days in NICU
Abigail Rose 2lbs 7oz. 55 days in NICU
http://thesmithfamilytriplets.blogspot.com/

1. - I'm no expert however, I think during the initial stages of sleep training, I would probably let them sleep. It does get tricky though because you need to keep the feed schedule on track. Once you figure out your sleep times and coordinate that with your feed times, it will become easier to gage when you need to wake them (if at all). I know I cheated some days as I just couldn't stand it. I usually went with the guidance that if the nap didn't work well I'd just try for the next sleep cycle. In "healthy sleep habits..." the suggestion is to let them cry for no more than one hour for nap time. So, if your schedule allows them to sleep for a bit if they stop at the 58th minute then yes, let them sleep.

2. We split them up around the 4-5 month corrected age as well -- they were just too long and getting too wiggly to sleep together any longer. It was also around the same time that we stopped sharing a room with them (once they got used to sleeping in their own cribs - I'm making an assumption here that you have them in your room at night given the crib in your room). Everyone seemed to get a bit more sleep after that.

3. It seems like a good transition point to start a new routine - you may as well do it all at once so they can be mad all at once and get it over with ! We also sought the advice of a sleep coach who gave us very similar advice to healthy sleep habits...she was the one who suggested that we change things up all at once and "get it over with" -- anyway, in our case it took some time as I said, 2 months, but I really feel the pain was worth it for all of us...the GGG are happy and sleep much better! (so do we!!)

hope that helps a bit...

Janet
G - 12/07 35 weeks
GGG-04/10 30 weeks