When you have newborn twins or toddlers who do everything in tandem, it can be hard to get a good night's sleep.
If you find yourself day-dreaming about getting a good night's sleep, you're probably in need of a restful, rejuvenating slumber.
But if you have newborns or young children who aren't avid sleepers yet, your overnights may be more nightmarish than they are dreamy.
While the first few months require several overnight wake-ups for feeding and changing your twins, a restful and restorative sleep doesn't have to be years away for your little ones—or for you, as their parents.
Five pieces of advice for a good night's sleep
Here are five pieces of science-backed advice for a good night's sleep from pediatric sleep expert Dr. Natalie Barnett. As vice-president of clinical research at Nanit, she leads their internal sleep and development research programs and initiated sleep research collaborations to better-understand pediatric sleep.
- Consistency is key. Research shows that babies and toddlers who have a consistent bedtime and nighttime routine sleep better and for longer periods than those who don't.
- Assess the nursery's ambience. Take a look at your nursery and make sure it's set up to promote a good night's sleep. Pay attention to things like the room darkness—do you have room darkening curtains, and if not, is any light peeking in from the window?—and white noise volume levels (you want it to be loud enough to block out sounds that might wake them up, but not so loud that it prevents them from falling asleep).
- Promote naptime in a consistent place. While there will be days where you're on-the-go and your babies might grab a nap in the car or during a stroll, it's important to try, as best you can, to have your babies do independent naps in their own cribs because it can help babies get used to their sleep environment.
- Avoid unnecessary overnight feeds. While newborns need to wake up for overnight feeds at first to ensure they're getting enough calories, once they're old enough and have put on enough weight, they can go for longer stretches between feeds. Making sure your twins are getting enough calories during daytime feeds can help your babies sleep for longer stretches overnight because they won't be waking up as often to get those calories during overnight feeds. If you aren't sure when you can start following your babies' hunger cues instead of waking them up like clockwork every three hours overnight to feed, ask their pediatrician for guidance (if they were born prematurely, you may have to take into account their adjusted age vs. their actual age).
- Try not to create sleep associations. If you breastfeed your children to sleep, they may come to rely on that to be soothed back to sleep if they wake up overnight, when really, they're able to self-soothe and resettle themselves (this is not to say you shouldn't check on them if they're up in the night; watch them on the baby monitor to make sure they don't need you and, more often than not, they'll put themselves back to sleep pretty quickly). You can try to disassociate the breast from sleep by giving your babies a bottle before bed instead of breastfeeding.
Bedtime routines and consistent cues are among the most effective tools for regulating children's sleep...the brain starts preparing for sleep before the child even lies down.
"Bedtime routines and consistent cues are among the most effective tools for regulating children's sleep," says Dr. Natalie Barnett. "When the same sequence of signals occurs in the same order each night, the routine itself can become a physiological trigger; the brain starts preparing for sleep before the child even lies down," she says.
One more sleep suggestion
According to Nanit, when your babies reach four months of age, that's a good time to start thinking about independent sleep.
When you're ready to start sleep training with your twins, reassess their nursery and take time to create a sleep environment and a bedtime routine that will be conducive to a good night's sleep.
Because a good night's sleep for your twins means a good night's sleep for all.
Because a good night's sleep for your twins means a good night's sleep for all.
"A sequenced routine using a sound and light machine—with distinct lights and sounds for the bedtime process, followed by sound alone throughout the night—gives your little one a clear, multi-stage roadmap to follow each night," says Dr. Barnett.
If you're unsure of how many hours your newborn babies should be sleeping, you can peek at the breakdown here of how much sleep they should be getting during their first 24 months.
When our twins started sleeping through the night, it was magical. Every twin parent should experience the feeling that comes with a solid stretch of quality sleep. There's nothing like it.
After the months of short-lived naps and continual wake-ups that come with surviving the newborn stage with twins, getting a substantial amount of sleep really can be life-changing.
If you're not at a point where you're getting quality sleep back yet, try some of these science-backed tips. Your sleep-deprived self will thank you.
Do you have newborn twins? Are you getting any sleep in your household? Let us know in the Comments section below or connect with us on Instagram to share your thoughts!
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