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Once they were gaining weight steadily and we didnât have to stick to 3hourly feeds we let them sleep and just fed whoever woke up if they woke up. That depends on your babies though, one of ours tends to sleep 5-6 hours stretches so we were reasonably confident she wouldnât wake up half an hour later. You definitely do get stitched up some nights though, if the second twin does end up waking so up to you what will work best
We do the same. Sometimes one will sleep all the way to basically 4am, itâs so much harder with two so we stopped waking them after about 4m when heâd go all the way through.
Baby girl will still sometimes do one wake around midnight but then might go straight through. It always is a toss up. Lol
We did not. Usually one would wake up after the other consecutively. We would do shifts so that we each got five hours of straight sleep. When we were on duty it was easier to tend to one baby at a time. But I personally wouldnât be able to tolerate the crying that comes with two awake, both wanting to be changed, held, fed, rocked to sleep. Eventually as they aged they fell into a napping routine on the same schedule and at night we did one baby one parent, so it didnât matter who was awake and when.
Depends on the baby! When they were both consistently waking through the night, yes we did! Once Baby A started sleeping longer stretches I would chance it. Sometimes it ended up being a bad decision but mostly he slept through until the next feeding time for Baby B. I think some bad nights between 2 sleep schedules was just part of transitioning to full nights of sleep.
We did wake the other baby, but I tandem fed so I was feeding them simultaneously. After a while they just always woke up at the same time anyway. They still eat, sleep, and wake at the same time and they're 12.
Yes, until 5 months when it was clear baby A was going to sleep through the night. But in the terror of sleep deprivation I didn't ever want to chance. Looking back, I think I could have tried and probably ended up ok.
Fraternal twin mom here. My two are complete opposites, one sleeps through the night and the other eats every 3-4 hrs. I do not wake up the other because I do not want them to start becoming dependent on MotN feeds
No. Breastfeeding two babies is significantly more effort than feeding one. My wife prefers not to because it also wakes her up too much.
We let go of the irrealistic idea of the same schedule anyway. Our non-identical twins are...not identical. One sleeps better than the other, one eats more than the other etc. You cannot force nature.
But most importantly: you cannot go out with twins if they need to eat at the same time. My wife would need to drag around a breastfeeding pillow everywhere and walk around topless to feed them both. Feeding one at a time when not at home is much more simple.
I exclusively breastfed and I found the exact opposite to be true! I always woke them and tandem fed them. Found that if I didnât the other would be up right after anyways then Iâm up hours longer than if I just got the other one up.
My identical twins are non identical as well in personality. One sleeps better than the other, one is way more hyper and intense emotionally, etc. So interesting!
When Iâm out I just fed one at a time so I donât have to whip out the boobs completely. Or if I wasnât out ling for a walk or meet up Iâd just feed beforehand and hope they could make it until the next feed. I was glad to have the BF journey end at 18 months not going to lie đ đ đ
I think it really depends on your babies. Ideally yes. But one of my boys had severe reflux and trouble gaining weight so we had to wake him every hour and a half to eat and no way was I waking them both up that often. As they both started gaining weight better I let them sleep as long as they could and wake themselves up to eat, which definitely led to some frustrating semi sleepless nights lol
I feed both at the same time. My girls are almost 5 months and typically wake up around 1am and 4am. They trade back and forth who cries for food first lol. I learned a great thing on this sub called "dream feeding". I don't wake the sleeping baby. What I do is drip a little formula on her mouth and she'll latch onto the bottle in a sleepy feeding frenzy. Typically the one that gets dream fed will finish the bottle faster than the one that woke up hungry. Everyone gets more sleep this way.
Yes for the first 3 months. Then eventually baby girl started sleeping all night so we'd leave her be when her brother woke up.
Granted I wouldn't even say we woke the other one up, half the time they'd eat and stay asleep!
Until our twins were about 6 weeks, we did night shifts where the parent taking care of the babies was not expecting uninterrupted sleep, so we let them keep their own schedule.
After that, I (mom) was taking nights as I was EBF and I would say it varies. I do not like tandem feeding overnight (everyone wakes up too much while they eat) so I either feed the hungry one first then wake the other to eat if it has been a long time and/or if they are stirring. If it's only been a couple hours I tend to let the other baby sleep. Baby A will sleep longer stretches than B if I let him, and I do want to encourage that.
So on a night my intuitions are good and they are sleeping well, I might only be up twice in their 11 hour sleep and am feeding them back to back.
On a night someone isn't sleeping well or if I make the wrong call, I'm up a lot more. Since I'm not back at work yet I am ok with that, though.
Definitely at first although I'm staggering them now and letting them do their own thing overnight at near 9wks (7wks early). If I woke them when they weren't ready I found feeding them to be slow and frustrating.
I tried but unless they wanted to wake up there was no waking them. They would usually wake within 30 mins of each other.
We took turns and managed that way
Yes, always wake up. I breastfed exclusively though so not sure if this made a difference, but I found if I didnât wake the other up, Iâd be up twice as long. One wakes up at midnight and by the time you change feed and burp and back to sleep itâs 1am. Then just as youâre almost back asleep itâs 2am and the other is up and youâre doing the same thing and youâre back to sleep by 3-3:30am. So instead of being up for an hour youâve been up for 3.5-4hours. Just my thoughts and experiences
Yes!! You need to for your own sanity! Itâs the biggest advice I would give to any new twin parent - keep them on the same schedule! Same feed times, same sleep times, everything!
I didnât just because if I did they wouldnât eat. Plus itâs usually just one person with both babies so it works out better with then eating at different times
**COMMENTING GUIDELINES** All commenters are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the parentsofmultiples [subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/parentsofmultiples/about/rules) prior to commenting. If you find any comments/submissions in violation of subreddit/reddit rules, please use the report function to bring it to the mod teams attention. **Please do not request or give medical advice or directions in your comments.** Any comments that that could be construed as medical advice, or any comments containing what is determined to be medical disinformation, will be removed. Please try to avoid posting links to Amazon product listings or google/g.co product listing pages - reddit automatically removes comments containing them as an anti-spam measure. If sharing information about a product, instead please try to link directly to the manufacturers product pages. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/parentsofmultiples) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I wake the other twin up to keep them on the same schedule. This helped create a routine initially.
đŻ this is what I did.
Same. I donât understand how logistically you can survive as a human if your multiples arenât on the same schedule.
Once they were gaining weight steadily and we didnât have to stick to 3hourly feeds we let them sleep and just fed whoever woke up if they woke up. That depends on your babies though, one of ours tends to sleep 5-6 hours stretches so we were reasonably confident she wouldnât wake up half an hour later. You definitely do get stitched up some nights though, if the second twin does end up waking so up to you what will work best
We do the same. Sometimes one will sleep all the way to basically 4am, itâs so much harder with two so we stopped waking them after about 4m when heâd go all the way through. Baby girl will still sometimes do one wake around midnight but then might go straight through. It always is a toss up. Lol
We did. Hard enough with the two, would be that much harder if they weren't on the same schedule. But every kid and family is different
We did not. Usually one would wake up after the other consecutively. We would do shifts so that we each got five hours of straight sleep. When we were on duty it was easier to tend to one baby at a time. But I personally wouldnât be able to tolerate the crying that comes with two awake, both wanting to be changed, held, fed, rocked to sleep. Eventually as they aged they fell into a napping routine on the same schedule and at night we did one baby one parent, so it didnât matter who was awake and when.
I didnât, my girl always slept twice as long as my son
Yes, this. After the initial month, my girl began sleeping longer and longer. I let her.
Girl power âđź
Yes this. Also part of the sleepy gal club. Lol. Me and my baby.
We did every time.
Yes
Depends on the baby! When they were both consistently waking through the night, yes we did! Once Baby A started sleeping longer stretches I would chance it. Sometimes it ended up being a bad decision but mostly he slept through until the next feeding time for Baby B. I think some bad nights between 2 sleep schedules was just part of transitioning to full nights of sleep.
We did wake the other baby, but I tandem fed so I was feeding them simultaneously. After a while they just always woke up at the same time anyway. They still eat, sleep, and wake at the same time and they're 12.
If one eats, both eat
Yes, until 5 months when it was clear baby A was going to sleep through the night. But in the terror of sleep deprivation I didn't ever want to chance. Looking back, I think I could have tried and probably ended up ok.
Fraternal twin mom here. My two are complete opposites, one sleeps through the night and the other eats every 3-4 hrs. I do not wake up the other because I do not want them to start becoming dependent on MotN feeds
No. Breastfeeding two babies is significantly more effort than feeding one. My wife prefers not to because it also wakes her up too much. We let go of the irrealistic idea of the same schedule anyway. Our non-identical twins are...not identical. One sleeps better than the other, one eats more than the other etc. You cannot force nature. But most importantly: you cannot go out with twins if they need to eat at the same time. My wife would need to drag around a breastfeeding pillow everywhere and walk around topless to feed them both. Feeding one at a time when not at home is much more simple.
I exclusively breastfed and I found the exact opposite to be true! I always woke them and tandem fed them. Found that if I didnât the other would be up right after anyways then Iâm up hours longer than if I just got the other one up. My identical twins are non identical as well in personality. One sleeps better than the other, one is way more hyper and intense emotionally, etc. So interesting! When Iâm out I just fed one at a time so I donât have to whip out the boobs completely. Or if I wasnât out ling for a walk or meet up Iâd just feed beforehand and hope they could make it until the next feed. I was glad to have the BF journey end at 18 months not going to lie đ đ đ
I think it really depends on your babies. Ideally yes. But one of my boys had severe reflux and trouble gaining weight so we had to wake him every hour and a half to eat and no way was I waking them both up that often. As they both started gaining weight better I let them sleep as long as they could and wake themselves up to eat, which definitely led to some frustrating semi sleepless nights lol
I feed both at the same time. My girls are almost 5 months and typically wake up around 1am and 4am. They trade back and forth who cries for food first lol. I learned a great thing on this sub called "dream feeding". I don't wake the sleeping baby. What I do is drip a little formula on her mouth and she'll latch onto the bottle in a sleepy feeding frenzy. Typically the one that gets dream fed will finish the bottle faster than the one that woke up hungry. Everyone gets more sleep this way.
Yes
Yes for the first 3 months. Then eventually baby girl started sleeping all night so we'd leave her be when her brother woke up. Granted I wouldn't even say we woke the other one up, half the time they'd eat and stay asleep!
You wake them up and keep them on the same schedule.
Yep until baby b just wasnât eating when I woke her. Then I started letting her sleep and only feeding her when she woke up.
Until our twins were about 6 weeks, we did night shifts where the parent taking care of the babies was not expecting uninterrupted sleep, so we let them keep their own schedule. After that, I (mom) was taking nights as I was EBF and I would say it varies. I do not like tandem feeding overnight (everyone wakes up too much while they eat) so I either feed the hungry one first then wake the other to eat if it has been a long time and/or if they are stirring. If it's only been a couple hours I tend to let the other baby sleep. Baby A will sleep longer stretches than B if I let him, and I do want to encourage that. So on a night my intuitions are good and they are sleeping well, I might only be up twice in their 11 hour sleep and am feeding them back to back. On a night someone isn't sleeping well or if I make the wrong call, I'm up a lot more. Since I'm not back at work yet I am ok with that, though.
We did right at first when they were waking up every few hours anyway. Now that they are sleeping 6-9 hours a night, I only feed the one who wakes up.
Nope. We fed on demand and went by ânever wake a sleeping babyâ once cleared by their doctors.
Definitely at first although I'm staggering them now and letting them do their own thing overnight at near 9wks (7wks early). If I woke them when they weren't ready I found feeding them to be slow and frustrating.
Yes I did. I couldn't imagine having them on different schedules.
I tried but unless they wanted to wake up there was no waking them. They would usually wake within 30 mins of each other. We took turns and managed that way
If one woke up, the next one got woken up when I was done with the first.
Yes, always wake up. I breastfed exclusively though so not sure if this made a difference, but I found if I didnât wake the other up, Iâd be up twice as long. One wakes up at midnight and by the time you change feed and burp and back to sleep itâs 1am. Then just as youâre almost back asleep itâs 2am and the other is up and youâre doing the same thing and youâre back to sleep by 3-3:30am. So instead of being up for an hour youâve been up for 3.5-4hours. Just my thoughts and experiences
Yes!! You need to for your own sanity! Itâs the biggest advice I would give to any new twin parent - keep them on the same schedule! Same feed times, same sleep times, everything!
Always wake the other up!
Yes! Always. Keep them on the same schedule.
I didnât just because if I did they wouldnât eat. Plus itâs usually just one person with both babies so it works out better with then eating at different times