Twins: Newborn sleeping arrangements....

[Goandplay]

What am I doing?

Moses baskets to begin with? If so 1 or 2.
Cot or cot bed? 1 or 2.

Or moses basket downstairs and cot upstairs...

Swaddled or unswaddled?

If sharing:

1 blanket or 2?
Top and tail, side by side or cot divider....

Lastly is this a suitable night time blanket?

Thank you!

[gardenpixies32]

It all depends on you and the space available.

I have...
DTs sharing a cot at night in my bedroom, top and tail, swaddled (they are 5 weeks) with 2 light blankets on top. They have their main naps here (morning and afternoon naps).

I was going to buy a travel cot and mattress for downstairs but decided to save that money and I put one of their cots in the living room for naps.

I plan to move them to their own bedroom into their own cots at about 6 months.

We don't have much space in second bedroom so didn't buy cot beds will put DTs in single beds at about 16 months.

That blanket looks fine to me :)

[Nancy54]

hey i have 5 week old twins too.

I've got an ikea cot which has a removable side and so i've made it into a co sleeper.

for the mo they are little so they are side by side sideways in the cot if you see what i mean.

in terms of blankets i use 'babynomade' blankets by red castle as they are really snuggly, they are sort of swaddled in it but it's really easy to put them in and there's no danger of the cover going over their head etc.

during the day they sleep in their carrycots that come with the buggy.

[Glittertwins]

Hi.
We never bothered with Moses baskets. They napped on play mats in the lounge during the day, lightly swaddled. At night, they were again swaddled and shared a cot sleeping side by side for 4 weeks. We moved her out into her own cot as he had managed to wriggle quite a long way up. They have had their room from the first night we got out of hospital.

[RedZombie]

Moses baskets seemed a lot of money for how long you use them.
We had two cots, one upstairs and one dOwnstairs. They would sleep top to tail. When they were big enough to start disturbing each other we moved the downstairs cot upstairs and they had one each.
We had cellular blankets and sheets, whatever the right number was according to the safety guidelines. DH was a demon swaddler, they always managed to get out when I tried it.

[Glittertwins]

I think we were a little cavalier in safety guidelines but they have survived into quite hardy 4 year olds.
They also had standard M&P cots then went into full size single beds from her at 19 months and him at 2 years old. We got bunk beds that could also be split up safely and easily as we didn't think it worthwhile to pay extra for cot beds when they inevitably got too big plus we could use them whilst they were still in cots.

[thereistheball]

We've had our twins home for 3 nights after 10 weeks in hospital. They are in one cot by my side of the bed (side by side) - but Dh finds it hard to sleep through their grunting so we are on duty in shifts and when he is 'off' he sleeps in the living room (where we have a second cot for the daytime) and I have often brought a grisly twin into bed with me. The hospital was strict about sleeping bags instead of blankets but we've found one responds well to swaddling. We use a large cotton square, like a big muslin, but we have the heat cranked up to be like hospital. Eventually we will bring the second cot into to the bedroom and put a playmat down in the living room. They'll move into their own room at some point between 3-6 months.

[twinnies26]

Hi there,

We let our girls sleep in the twin carrycot downstairs during the day.

At night they shared a big cot. We divided it up, they slept side by side in about 1/4 of the cot, they were tiny! As they grew they slept together is all sort of positions, length ways, width ways eventually sharing half the cot each, then lengthways toe to toe - at 6.5 months we separated them as they were disturbing each other.

We used cellular blankets, the hospital told us not to swaddle.

good luck! :)

[Goandplay]

Thank you everyone.

We have the option of lending 2 moses baskets but if I use the carrycots then I will not need to buy mattresses.

twinnies26 Can I ask why the hospital said no swaddling?

[Aspiemum2]

Our plan was for them to share a cot bed, but they wouldn't sleep in it at first. We borrowed a Moses basket and they slept together swaddled. She hated swaddling by 4 weeks so went into a sleeping bag and he got so big that we moved him into the cotbed.
She followed a few weeks later and now at 6 months we have split them up (as they were disturbing each other) and they have their own cotbed.

It's all about what works for you and your babies, the best laid plans and all that!

We also got our cotbeds second hand for £50 each and just bought new mattresses, but I'm the type to rarely buy another new as it seems so wasteful to me

[minesapintofwine]

Hi nancy congratulations on your twins wondered how you were doing. You should come onto the postnatal thread for moaning support now!

Anyway my own dts were the same as Aspie tried to put them in a cot top and tailed (we had a divider) but they weren't too happy with that so we would move the moses baskets upstairs at night (palava!) they outgrew them at 5 months. And I mean outgrew!!! So have never shared really apart from the hospital.

twinnies I too have heard hospitals don't recommend swaddling now though they swaddled mine for me.

[beyoglu]

Hi go, we used carricots during the day and cots at night from birth, put them in the one cot for about the first 2 weeks but then moved them apart (kept the cots side by side so we could do shooshing/feeding etc of both at the same time). Got some cheap cots from Ikea.

Till about 12 weeks we had them downstairs in carricots when we were awake and then changed to putting them to bed upstairs at 7pm, at 12 weeks. A couple of weeks later we started putting them upstairs for naps as well because as they got older they were more aware of light and noise, and needed to be in their own quiet darkened room. There were a lot of times during the first 8 weeks or so when I could only get them to sleep on me or in their pram so we also got a Weego baby carrier so I could sling them in and go about doing stuff. I found that one of the most challenging things about having two - you can't just cuddle them to sleep!

Swaddling... hrm... we swaddled from 8 weeks till 6 months and it was great in the beginning but it became an increasingly useless sleep association (because they were used to the feeling of being swaddled but they were able to wriggle out of it so they would wake themselves up). We had a fairly sleepless week weaning them off the swaddle but we're done now. If you do go for swaddling try and get them out of it by about 12 weeks, before the 4 month sleep regression and before they notice what's going on!

We use sleeping bags now - we planned to use them from birth but the Mothercare ones have a minimum weight of 7lb so we couldn't use them straight off.

[HappyAsASandboy]

In the very early days I had a cot with one side down pushed up against my side of the bed, then my babies slept side by side across the cot. That meant I could pick up both DC by sitting up in bed ( no need to stand), which was great after a CS.

I had a travel cot with bassinette downstairs, but TBH I spent most of my time upstairs anyway, so hardly used the travel cot unless we went away.

Whatever you decide will work fine (or you'll change things around once they're here )

[Nancy54]

mines - am ok, have only just surfaced really after a mad few weeks! been meaning to come on the thread but just been a little zombie like....i'm gonna put a post on now!