Looking for a little advice about trying to introduce some schedule changes including adding some planned nap time. Presently the girls (12 and 13lbs) nap independently, whenever the urge strikes them.

5am (Wake them up for breakfast. About 5oz milk)
6:00am Dad leaves
7:00am Mom leaves
7:00am-7:30 Grandma by herself
7:30am Nanny arrives
8am 5oz milk
10:15am 1tsp rice to 4tsp milk (just added this today)
11am 5oz milk
2pm 5oz milk
2:30ish Nanny leaves.
2:30ish - 3:45 or 4:00 Grandma by herself.
3:45-4:00pm Mom arrives.
4:45pm Dad arrives.
5pm 5oz milk
7:15pm 1tsp oatmeal to 4tsp milk
8pm 5oz milk
8:30ish sleep

We just started having our last one sleep through the night (I'm sure there will be a few more nights of waking up...but it's trending to sleeping through).

One thing we want to try to do is keep the time where grandma is there by herself to a minimum...and if she is there by herself, maybe have that be the scheduled nap time.

Our first goal is to introduce at least one scheduled nap, somewhere near the 2pm time frame would be best (for us...not sure about them lol). We'd also like to start prepping them (they probably are not exactly ready for it yet...) for going 11 hours...so we're thinking of knocking out the 5am at some point in the future.

Our secondary goal is to try to get their first meal of the day started a little later, so we can change our nanny's start time. Right now she arrives at 7:30 then she and grandma do the feed at 8....I'd like to see about moving that feed to 9am instead so she can get there at 8:30 and stay a little later so grandma can start dinner. Right now she leaves about 2:30...but if she could stay until 3:30 my wife comes home at 3:45-4:00pm.

Right off the bat I'm thinking of pushing the 5am to 5:30am...that could accommodate the nanny's new start time. But once they start stretching out that sleep time...that 5:30 would get pushed back a bit...can't go too far though cuz Mom and Dad need to feed them and get to work.

Sorry for the copious amount of detail, I'm a computer programmer and details are my life.

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/

Is there a way you can not wake them up at 5am to eat? It sounds like it would be challenging if you or your wife plan to feed them the first bottle, but honestly I would not wake them up that early to feed them. Are you sure if you let them sleep through the 5am bottle they won't just sleep until the nanny arrives? At that age adjusted my kids went 12 hours between bottles. I know not every baby will be ready to do that but if you have to wake them up to start the day your kids might be ready to sleep longer.

Maybe you could try to see how long they would sleep on the weekend when you don't have to go to work. For instance, if you realize they are willing to sleep until 7am maybe that could be the new start time for the nanny.

I'm not too much help with nap times. We were on a 4 hour schedule. I will say that we did not feed a bottle and then put them down for a nap. Once we started scheduled nap times it was always nap and then get up around a bottle time. We did start with the afternoon nap and then worked on the morning one.

Lori

http://yesidohavemyhandsfull.blogspot.com/

When mine were that age, I relied on the sleep articles on BabyCenter.com. The recommendation was that at 4-6 months old babies can stay awake for two hours at a time. I used that to start regularly scheduled naps and it worked well for us. Of course there were times when someone would wake up early, but I always stuck to the same nap time even if that happened so it didn't mess up the rest of the day. I followed the Eat-Wake-Sleep pattern from one of the big sleep books (can't remember which one) so they ate right after waking up, had some play time, and then took their nap.

If the first bottle can't be later than 5:30, you could start moving the bed time earlier. For a while ours were going to bed at 6pm and sleeping until 6am. It was a really early bed time, but that's what worked with their rhythms. Having the evening to ourselves was really nice, too.

If you can move them to a 4-hour schedule and have the first bottle at 5:30 then the second would be at 9:30 with the cereal either before that or at 9:30. Or you could keep the same bedtime and drop the 5am bottle altogether, but then Mom and Dad wouldn't see them awake before going to work.

Mom to GBG born in July 2009 at 30w6d: 3#10oz, 3#12oz, 3#2oz

I agree with Lori -- I would see if you can drop the 5 am feed and let them sleep until they wake. I'm assuming that you want to get that first feed in before you go to work? Our GGG were waking around 4-6 am for the longest time...my husband started back to work and we'd still have to get up to feed but then we put them and us back to bed for a few more winks. If it was closer to 6, then he'd just get up but the babes still are put back to bed and then wake around 7:30. Now the girls are stretching out more and some days are not waking up til 7am -- in that case, I feed all 3 by myself.

Schedules are such unique things because everyone's family works a bit differently...As the pp suggested, babes at that age still probably need to sleep (in the day) after about 2 hours of wake time...the first morning nap starts to get established around 4 months or so -- so you're in the window! We took guidance from the book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy child"...first nap should be somewhere around 9-10am or so however, with a 5 am wake time, that would be stretching your little one way too much. So, if you're not able to change the 5 am start, you might consider feeding at 5 am then putting them right back down to continue their night sleep -- we've done this with all of ours and it has been working quite well (we don't wake them though, they wake on their own).

The one thing that struck me as well, is that the girls nap independently of each other...not that this is THE way however, I've stuck with a principle to nap one, nap all -- wake one, wake all (within 30 minutes of each other) so to maintain a decent schedule. I would recommend (if you haven't already), to set up a routine so each time you put the babies down for a nap or night, do the routine. Make it simple so that whoever is managing the babes can do it in a short period of time -- it may take the girls some time to get used to it -- but soon they will figure out -- oh this is time for nap/sleep.

Around 5-6 months, you can start to put the babes to sleep using "clock time" -- so instead of putting them down after 2 hours of wake time, set your nap and night sleep times...we use 9:30am for nap #1 and 1:30pm for nap#2 and bedtime is at 6:30pm. 6 months (adjusted) is around the time that the babes will start to develop their afternoon nap usually starting sometime between 12 -2 pm. Some people still put their babes down for a 3rd nap as well sometime between 3-5pm. Again, we've opted for an early bedtime as we were having trouble with naps early on, so dropped the 3rd nap...I'm going to stick my neck out here and suggest that you might want to consider an earlier bedtime or, get a 3rd scheduled nap in each day. The earlier bedtime is sweet, as you do get some evening time in. The babes will learn to sleep through, it may take some time.

I guess the other thing you might want to consider, and I can't recall if you posted about this already, is moving from a 3 to a 4 hour feed schedule. Your volumes would have to adjust and I think I recall you were having trouble with feeding a while ago, so this might not be an option...anyway, it would help streamline the schedule.

I don't know if any of this helps...

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

This weekend we are going to see how long they'll sleep if we don't wake them up at 5am. If they wake up on their own shortly after that we won't make many changes...but if they go till say 7am we'll either start shifting their bedtimes earlier or start their first am feed later.

We're kind of sad about putting them to bed earlier (though we know we'll need to eventually) because during the week it feels like we don't get much time with them after we get home.

They go back to sleep pretty quick after the 5am and then get up about 6:30ish. So we're going to try to start the first nap at 9am. Then we'll address the afternoon nap...hopefully 2:30-3ish. I think if we can get about 1.5 hours each time we'll be in good shape.

I would LOVE to switch to a 4 hour schedule...but one of our girls has a voracious appetite and I don't think her stomach can hold much more food than she's doing right now. She often can't finish all of her 5oz, leaving .25 to .5 oz each time...but getting starved after 2.5 hours. She has a super fast metabolism. She finishes her sisters cereal every night (it's still the training amount though), she woofs it down like a pro. I wonder how disruptive it would be if we upped her solids and lowered her milk at the cereal feeds...hmmm. She'd definately get more calories that way.

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/

Whatever you do, don't lower her milk when you up the solids. They should be drinking the same amount. That is how you can gage if you are feeding too many solids. If the formula amount decreases you are feeding too much. Plus, solids are just for practice at this point. Baby cereal and baby food don't have many calories in them and are not that nutritious compared to BM or formula.

Lori

http://yesidohavemyhandsfull.blogspot.com/

Right now they are getting about 1-2 tsp of cereal mixed with 3-4 tsp BM twice a day. So it's not much. We'd like to start introducing veggies soon but at the same volume. At what age do you start making the switch to higher volumes? I was envisioning that at some point during the two 'solid' feeds we'd slowly start upping the volume of food and lowering the volume of BM but keep the other bottles the same. And then adding a third meal, and keeping the other bottles. I just am not sure when that point is. They are pretty much 5mo adjusted now.

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/

You do up the volume of food as you add veggies and then fruits, but you do not lower the volume of BM. As your kids grow, their stomachs should be able to handle the extra food. You aren't feeding them much at first. When we started, all of my kids together wouldn't always finish one container of baby food. We always fed solids after bottles until they were 9 months old. The BM or formula is the important part. That way they didn't fill up on baby food and not want to eat their bottle.

I had an old school pedi who had us start cereal at 4 months acutal, 3 adjusted. Since they were so young, I just did cereal for a month, one feeding a day. At 5 months actual we added a 2nd feeding and that is when we started doing veggies. We did each veggie for a week to check for allergic reactions and then moved on to fruits. Once we started fruits, we did them in the morning with the cereal and veggies in the "dinner" feeding. We did not add a lunch feeding of solids until they were 9 months old but others do that earlier.

Lori

http://yesidohavemyhandsfull.blogspot.com/

Interesting. Everything we've read said to do the cereal before the BM, but what you say makes sense too. Right now they fall asleep at the end of the bottle, so I'm thinking that will happen if we try to do bottle first. We're at the end of the first month of cereal so we'll be doing veggies and BM in the evening for the next couple of weeks. We are definitely trying to ensure we are only adding one food a week. Maybe after a couple days of veggies we'll start upping their evening solids. But I'm wondering what's going to happen if we give them their bottles first...maybe a little coffee in it to keep them peppy?

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/

LOL. See, your schedule is opposite from mine. I always fed after sleep, not before. My kids would take a nap, or in the morning get up, and then I fed them a bottle or bottle/solids. We did not feed before sleep except for at bedtime.

Lori

http://yesidohavemyhandsfull.blogspot.com/