Crib Happenings

What's that? I'm posting another post only 4 days from the last one? Proof I'm getting the hang of this whole parenting twin thing... Ha! Yeah right...

This post is going to be about sleep. It's not a very exciting topic and may put you to sleep if you choose to read it in it's entirety.  Please make sure you are in a safe and secure place so you don't injure yourself if you fall asleep while reading this...don't say I didn't warn you.

The babies have been sleeping in our room in Rock N Plays. It's worked out great for us. We take turns feeding throughout the night and were up at the same time a lot when both babies were feeding more frequently. (Our middle of the night conversations were special...but not missed). Much to our surprise, Ella has started sleeping through the night. We put both babies to sleep around 8:30 and she's been sleeping through until 5-6 am. Evan still gets up once a night, typically around 2-3. Not bad at all!!! Especially compared to our first night home...I was in pain, on pain meds and exhausted and crashed. Evan was up most of the night screaming and eating sporadically and Collin was up with him the whole time....he got a whole 1.5-2 hours of sleep before we had to head into our first pediatrician appointment. Ugh...those were some looooong nights. We feel like the babies are doing well with sleeping. Are they? I have no idea really since we're learning as we go (aka we have no freaking clue what we are doing), but it seems good to us...

The last few weeks when the babies were up at night beginning to fuss, instead of hopping up to get them a bottle, we'd get up and give them a pacifier. Sometimes we'd have to give them a pacifier 2-3 times (why do those things NEVER stay in?! Would it be bad to use tape in this situation?), but this kept them content and put them back to sleep for about 1-2 hours. I think that's what helped Ella finally start making it through the night. We'd hold her off via our paci method and eventually she just kept sleeping. Who knows. Maybe she's just a good sleeper. Maybe we're really on to something and should write a book about our 'paci sleeping method' since sleep training and the like seems to be all the rage...

We decided to get wild and crazy on Saturday night and try out the twins in one of the cribs. Evan's room is closest to ours, so we decided we'd put them both in his crib. When you have 10 week old twins this is what a wild and crazy Saturday night consists of. I've read a lot of blogs/forums talking about having problems transitioning babies from bassinets/Rock N Plays into cribs so we figured we should give it a shot and see what kind of battle we're up against. 

Our babies go to sleep without a fight. We do a feeding, change them into PJ's, get a dry diaper on, carry them upstairs to our bed, swaddle them and put them away (I call going to bed putting them away...like they are some kind of toy or something). Evan falls asleep instantly and Ella typically stays up cooing (that girl is going to be a TALKER! She LOVES to coo and 'talk' to us. She will be talking our ears off..) and throwing her arms around a bit (she could be a conductor of a symphony someday..that's what is looks like she is doing.) We went through this whole routine and placed them in the crib awaiting for meltdowns. We were so afraid I think we tiptoed out of the room. Nothing. Both did their thing and went to sleep. Really? What were we so afraid of?

Ella slept until 6 and Evan got up at 2 and went back down until 6. The usual sleeping business of the E twins. Nothing wild or crazy. It was a bit difficult for us to sleep. I think every noise on the monitor woke us up. I also am paranoid of something happening. What I'm not sure. The crib caving in. The cat sleeping on their head and suffocating them. One of them crawling out of the crib and bumping their head. Because of these crazy paranoid thoughts, I had to check on them a few times before I could finally go to sleep. They pulled through in one piece.

We got extra wild and crazy on Sunday night and put the babies in the crib again. Same thing. It went great. So I guess we're transitioning them into a crib at night. We didn't plan for it and never discussed it. One of us just said 'we should try this' and here we are. My babies are growing up way too fast...

Any advice on making Evan sleep through the night would be appreciated. That kid is determined to eat in the middle of the night. If he could pull an all night sleep fest we'd really be in business.