Our twins' feeding and sleeping schedule

So lots of my friends have been asking about the babies - how often do we feed them, what times do they sleep, etc, etc.

Well, let me start by saying that they were on a strict 3-hour schedule in the NICU and we thought, "great! we'll just keep it going and all will be well"

Not so easy!

When Connor came home, we kept to the schedule very well. 2, 5, 8 and 11. Rinse and repeat.

By the way (and don't feel bad if you didn't know this - we didn't either), 3 hours does not mean you get a 3-hour break between feeds. It's wake at 2, change nappy (sometimes multiple times if baby pees/ poos while you're doing, which they seem to have a habit of doing in the wee small hours of the morning), feed, burp, feed, burp some more, rock to sleep, put down, shhhh baby if he's a bit fussy.... At this point 1 - 1 1/2 hours have elapsed, so there's 1 1/2 to 2 hours left before the next feed. I thought babies ate a lot quicker before having them.

Also, we were aware that we were "on trial" as he'd be weighed two weeks later at the appointment with the paediatrician so we were very careful to feed exactly on schedule. We even woke him (which, by the way, goes totally against my feelings - how can you wake a sleeping baby, especially one as cute as this boy, but apparently I want to be a competent mother more :) so we woke him to feed).

All went well and we were approved as good parents because Connor gained something like 45g a day over those two weeks, which is great.

At that same appt, we asked about moving him to 4-hour feeds, which she (the paed) was fine about doing, as long as he had the required amount of ml per day.

So we because slightly more lax in favour of more sleep and let Connor wake at 3 1/2 hours and sometimes, gloriously at 4 hours.

All this was easy to keep a record of (I'm a nerd, remember) because he was just one baby.

Then Kendra came home.

It's a whole new ballgame monitoring two babies and I totally abandoned The Notebook. I was actually so proud of this notebook in the days Before Kendra. I knew exactly when Connor made a poo, how much he drank and when, etc, etc.

After that, D would ask when C or K made a poo and I'd say something vague (I'm not a vague person by the way) like, "oh, sometime yesterday, or maybe it was last night. Actually could have been this morning".

No idea!

Anywayyyy, since life is about survival, we basically let the babies do their own thing. If they woke together, good and well; if not, also fine. We'd take whatever sleep we could get!

And the truth is that they let you know with their cries when they're hungry. When they cry, we do the NICU routine - grab baby, change nappy, feed, burp, put back to bed. Of course, as I said above, that takes anything from an hour to 90 minutes.

Although I must be fair to Connor - there have been some nights where he's slept longer, woken up starving after 4 hours, and the whole routine from start to finish has been 30 - 40 minutes. Yesss! More sleep for me.

The two of us love our sleep so we get the business done and then it's back to sleep.

This pic was taken while I was reading blogs on the laptop and feeding him, propping the bottle up with my chin. I'm trying to teach him to hold his bottle but so far he's not that interested in being independent :)

Back to Kendra... so she is strictly a 3-hour gal. Never sleeps a moment longer; in fact, often wakes a half hour earlier! You know what that means, right? Yip, even less sleep for us.

Interesting thing about Kendra - the MINUTE she pees, she screams in her sleep, waking herself up and then screams properly until the whole house is awake, even her brother.

D and I joke that we initially thought we'd have to buy separate cots so the babies wouldn't disturb one another; looks like we now have to buy separate HOUSES!

It's a joke but actually very true.

Seriously, she cries when wet, when hungry, and anytime she feels like it. You'd never say it looking at this pic though...

but this is a very familiar sight in our house. In the beginning I'd keep taking pictures hoping for one "nice" one and then I realised this is actually Kendra, no point denying the fact :) So we have lots of pics like this!

If they wake together, then D and I will each attend to a baby. Otherwise, it's really whoever gets to the baby first.

Confession time - I think I missed out on that "mother always hears her child crying" gene.

The truth is when one of the babies starts crying and I'm asleep, the crying weaves itself into a dream. By the time I'm aware that it's actually a real baby crying, the baby in question (usually Connor) is crying as if his heart is breaking because he's been ignored for some time. Either that or D will nudge me out of sleep.

Kendra shrieks and the high pitch usually breaks through the dream barrier :)

These days D does Kendra's and I do Connor's feeds at night time. That's so that we know when the baby in question woke, how long they slept, etc.

Which tells you that we don't wake the other twin when the one wakes. It's just easier for us because we don't wake with the cries. In fact, D sets his alarm clock to wake him.

New rules prevail

This past Tuesday they were 7 weeks old and something suddenly clicked for me. I realised these two LITTLE people are seriously kicking our butts. No more!

So we're trying to get them back on a schedule. And I've hauled out The Notebook again to keep copious notes. I've also learned that K eats as if she's a 3.2 kg baby and C as if he's a 4.6 - 5kg baby!

My full-time nanny starts on Tuesday and works from 8am - 5pm Monday - Friday. So our first goal will be to get them back on a 3-hour feeding schedule, then 3 and a half hour, then 4 hourly schedule. Hopefully this will help to restore some order to our lives again.

I typed up a 10-page document (don't laugh) on the babies...how to do bottles, laundry, bathing, etc, etc. so we are both on the same page, so to speak! I also have a feeding schedule form to keep track of the times and amts of their feeds.

I also have a new night nanny on Mondays and Thursdays so I'm getting a bit of freedom again - on Thursday last week I actually went to a dance class at the gym. The teacher asked me if I'm pregnant (!) but that's another story.

Wish me luck. Tomorrow I'll be TOTALLY on my own with these two for the entire day - pray that they'll be good babies and sleep lots and wake up one at a time because I only have two hands!

How are you guys doing?