The Joys of Sleep Training!

Sleep training, while the bane of my existence this past week has been a beneficial experience for the Turcottes. It started with the realization that the girls were starting to nap less and have longer stretches of awake time! No longer were they sleeping 20 hours a day, but closer to 15 hours. While this seems like a lot, the trick is getting the majority of the hours to be consecutive hours between the hours of 10pm and 7am. 
In order to prepare for this grand adventure called Sleep Training I talked to a lot of friends who I admire as parents and who had recently sleep trained one of their children. Jenn, Beth, Natalie (neighbour) and Natalie (Biggar) all offered some great tips and advice from their own recent experiences. Then I did a lot of reading and A LOT is no exaggeration. The best sleep book I read was "Healthy Sleep Habit, Healthy Twins" (there is also a singleton version). Unlike other great baby books, the whole point of this book is to talk about sleep. 

When I first started sleep training, this is what I tried:
*Always putting the girls down drowsy, NOT asleep. (so the girls were not dependent on me through rocking, singing etc to fall asleep)
*providing white noise so the girls don't disturb each other (Sleep Sheep!)
*trying to be consistent with the bed time
*doing a dream feed around 11pm to hopefully push the girls to sleep longer through the night.
*topping up the dream feed with 10-20mL more than the usual feedings.

The results of my strategies were positive. The girls often slept through the crying of their sister. Shawn and I got used to "free time" after 8pm as the girls were usually sleeping by this time and the dream feed allowed us to sleep until at least 4am or so instead of waking up at 2am. 

While all of this progress was very encouraging, I was frustrated by outside comments of people who knew someone with a baby at 4 months or less that slept through the night and why weren't my girls etc. etc. Plus I began to notice some patterns forming. At bed time, Molly would roll over to her left side and instantly fall asleep, while Abigail would start fussing the moment you put her in the crib and would require frequent return visits to the room to calm her down before she would finally settle for the night. This would sometimes take over an hour and cause much frustration for Shawn and I. It also became apparent that Molly had formed the habit of waking up around 4am. Regardless of what time the dream feed took place, 10pm, 11pm or midnight, she would consistently wake up around 4am while Abigail would continue to sleep. 


Revised attempt at sleep training, this is what I tried:
*put them down drowsy
*white noise
*consistent bed time
*dream feeds topped up
*trying to have the last feeding close to bed time and then stretch the dream feed until at least 4.5 hours later.
*beginning a bed time routine
*gradual extinction

This approach had a few more positive outcomes such as Abigail going down easier for naps, we think she would have made it through the night if we weren't waking her up for a feeding once Molly had woken us up. The gradual extinction was tough. After we did our bedtime routine and put the girls into bed, if Abigail started to fuss, we would respond right away, do a little check and console, replace the soother, give her a pat, tell her we loved her and then leave the room. When she started to cry we would wait 5 minutes then go in. If it happened again we would wait 10 minutes before going in. The most we ever had to let her cry was for 15 minutes but then she would always fall asleep. Totally heart breaking to hear her crying at the top of her lungs. However, she would get to sleep sooner and the one thing I learned from all of my reading is that crying doesn't have any ill health effects, but lack of sleep can have very poor health side-effects.

One problem I still found with my routines and sleep training was that I could never predict exactly when the feedings would be. Sometimes my bed time consistency would be messed up by a feeding that fell around 8pm instead of 7pm. Plus the girls were not sleeping longer than 5 hours in a row. A few more conversations for friends, a bit more reading and finally we decided to go for it...crying it out.

Final revised sleep training plan, this is what I tried (and trying right now):
 *put them down drowsy
*white noise
*consistent bed time
*dream feeds topped up
*trying to have the last feeding close to bed time and then stretch the dream feed until at least 4.5 hours later.
*a bed time routine that lasted 15-20min and happened in their bedroom
*crying it out 

We decided to try the cry it out method because Molly started joining in with Abigail and fussing at bed time. The first night was awful, Molly went to sleep pretty quickly but Abigail scream cried as loud as she could for 55 minutes. Holy stressful! We basically tried to hang out on the front porch, watch hockey or talk on the phone to keep us from hearing her cry. The second night Abigail cried for 35 minutes and Molly joining in near the end of Abigail's crying but then cried for an additional 20 minutes. Sleep training was still sucking at this point. But on the third night, when we put the girls down to bed.....NOTHING....no crying, no fussing, they just eventually fell asleep. You know what that is.....AWESOME!!!!

One important note for sleep training...starting to train your kids to sleep, days before you take them away for a weekend to the OECTA Provincial Volleyball Championships is probably not the best idea! LOL However, on the Friday night, the girls went to bed in their hotel cribs and slept right next to our very loud hospitality room and didn't wake up at all until we woke them for the dream feed! Way to go girls. Our trip through the girls off a little bit, but the best part is, the girls now sleep from approximately 7:30pm until the dream feed and then until approx 6am or later. To finally achieve this level of sleep in consecutive hours, feels like a small piece of heaven. 

Bottom line: Sleep training sucks, listening to your twins simultaneously cry it out sucks, but the reward of a great sleep for your babies and a great sleep for Mommy and Daddy, made the hard 2-3 nights totally worth it! Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz