Some of you are thinking, why 6 months?
I don't have a good answer, only that I'm a wuss and felt sorry for them having Military Mama for their mother.
So we've been going about a week now and here's their new * schedule:
6 am - morning bottle with vitamins (do your babies take vitamins?)
8 am - breakfast - cereal
10 am - bottle - we offer 200 ml (ever since that night when he was starving) and he takes anything from 150 ml
12 pm - lunch - fruit and yoghurt
2 pm - bottle
4 pm - veggies
6 pm - milk
That's the plan anyway and if he's awake, great. If he's sleeping, we don't EVER wake a sleeping baby and wait for him to wake first.
I'm so glad I asked the paed about their sleep times because now I don't stress if they only sleep 3 hours.
For Kendra, it's the exact same story except she goes every 3 hours between feeds and doesn't get lunch yet, only cereal and veggies. And she has a bottle of 140 ml except for her 6pm bottle when I do 175 ml as she seems to like to drink a lot before bed. Of course, she also doesn't take her entire bottle all of the time.
I got the * schedule from Sleep Sense. You'll be happy to know I finally finished Baby Sense and Sleep Sense.
(their old schedule was totally on demand - we'd feed them with milk every 3 hours and put the solids in anywhere we could find a gap)
I can't seem to find any correlation between the amount of milk they drink and the length of time they sleep. Some days they seem to have very little and yet only wake once or twice and other times they have the same amount and wake more. Very confusing so I've stopped worrying about it. I could obsess more and do spreadsheets and stuff but I'm holding myself back on purpose.
Or is this only true for my babies?
Now, for the 6-month pics.
When all these shenanigans happen while I'm trying to get a good 6-month photo, I give up and take one where the subjects actually sit still.
P.S. When I got these stuffed animals I cried because they were bigger than the babies!P.P.S. This is my post for the 30-minute SteadyMom blog challenge
OMG! Cuteness overload!!!! Connor is chunking up just like Tommy has been. His cheeks look so pinchable! And Kendra is looking like quite the little princess! She's adorable!
ReplyDeleteLove the photos! Sleep is a brain chemistry, nothing to do with food. That's why I'm a Weissbluth fan. We absolutely did nighttime CIO at 5 months and we started "nap" training (at least two 1.5 hr naps and one 30 min nap at the end of the day) at four months. I was a bit of a dictator about it - it was all geared to me surviving back at work. I couldn't mentally survive my job without a full night's sleep!
ReplyDeleteThose pictures are great! I thought that figuring out the food/sleeping schedule was the hardest thing. Mostly because every time we figured out something that worked, it would change! Good luck...sounds like you're doing great!
ReplyDeleteBoy, those sleep/feed schedules sound great!
ReplyDeleteAlthough I never had multiples, with two "littles" only 13 months apart, I did have to figure out schedules & when we finally did get it all worked out-ahhhh, such peace in the home!!
Your twins are adorable! I love the photos. Getting my little guys to sleep has definitely been the toughest part of parenting. I have to agree with the previous poster that Weissbluth's book was the most helpful for us. And both of my boys wouldn't eat baby food until at least 9 months. Once they could eat little chunks of food they were happy.
ReplyDeleteI love the photos!
ReplyDeleteI always thought the sleep length - feeding quantity correlation was bunk. I wasn't true of my sister or my children.
We don't do vitamins. (This is my only point of conflict with my mother-in-law.) The girls had breast milk until age 7 months, so it wasn't necessary then, and we focus on the need for a balanced diet now. I will supplement with vitamins from time to time when they're eating particularly poorly or Melody's going through an "I eat only bananas" phase.
For myself, I notice that I only remember to take vitamins when I'm taking care of myself anyway by eating well and exercising.
Calcium is a challenge for me (I hate milk) so I do take calcium supplements.
Ha! Claire will still give me at least 12 (this morning 14) hours of glorious sleep. Emma has found she likes a good 330 bottle which is killing me! I don't know how you are surviving!
ReplyDeleteYes we do vitamins, particularly because the girls get my milk and I'm horribly anemic. I wish DH would use bibs with the vitamin bottles, that stuff stains!
Very cute! I can't imagine trying to juggle twins! I do have 3 month old and what helps for me is I don't look at the clock in the middle of the night. It's totally psychological, but it helps me!
ReplyDeleteI've stopped stressing about how much Josiah sleeps at night. I figured that I've got it pretty good most nights. The nights where he wakes every 2 hours are few and far between. Most nights he'll sleep between 9-12 hours with only one feeding after about 7 hours. His schedule is much later than many babies, sleeping between 10pm-midnight up to 10-11am. It's late nights, but I do get to sleep in most mornings. I finally figured that I have it better than many. So why stress out about how many times he wakes or eats? Even as an adult, I have some nights that I wake up frequently and some nights I sleep straight through. Why should I expect Josiah to be different?
ReplyDeleteI have also noticed that the amount of food (and even rice cereal or none) has no correlation with how well he sleeps.
All of our eating is on demand. I feed Josiah one bottle of breastmilk a day, about 6 oz of formula per bottle about 5 times a day, one serving of veggies, and sometimes a serving of rice cereal before bed.
I'd probably be a lot more rigid in my schedule if I was balancing 2 babies and a job and the house too. My schedule allows me to be more flexible.
I love the 3rd picture of the babies, with K screaming and C just staring at her. It just seemed true to life. And I love the last picture with the stuffed animals. At least they are well-behaved :-P
Gotta love those little guys! How Sweet, how different and how so worth all the effort!!!
ReplyDeleteCluck - stuffed animal photo - cluck! :) (oh and the beautiful babies :) )
ReplyDeleteDitto - amount of food has never altered their sleeping. 1 oz or 6 oz at the bedtime bottle, doesn't make a difference.
ReplyDeleteYour babies are adorable! I used to think filling up my kid's fuel tank right before bed was the trick ... then my daughter came along and the trick stopped working. So I guess it's not really a trick after all. :)
ReplyDelete