Sleep routine with twins?

[Lavitabellissima]

Ok so my 2 are now 6 months old and I more or less cuddle them to sleep every night [chmm]

What do you do? I'd be really interested to see what everyone else does.

I am mostly on my own at bed time as DP is usually working. Is this one of those "rod for your own back" things that people always talk about. I was always of the thought that I should do whatever works but some friends with singletons seem to have mastered putting them down and they sleep by themselves [cconfused]

I'm no expert but did the same and had the same worry. Everyone else I know in RL seem to have babies who just.. well.... sleep and it def made me doubt myself.

Our boys have just turned 1 and obviously understand so much more now and are clearly just playing up sometimes so I decided it was time to try & get a sleep routine in place.

We now do bath, story, bed, bottle, kiss goodnight and leave them to it. I sit in their room at the moment (avoiding eye contact & interaction) til they're asleep but will start leaving them before they are asleep this weekend. It's worked well for us and they fingers tightly crossed not jinxing it go off to sleep quickly and with little fuss and [whispers] seem to be sleeping better through the night (tho not actually sleeping through...). I'm glad I did it this way. I did feel under pressure to just let them cry themselves to sleep much sooner but didn't like the idea of them not understanding why we wouldn't just cuddle them.

lavita with DD i always used to BF her to sleep and worried that later on, she wouldn't be able to selfsettle. But she did. What I think was important was the whole bedtime routine - bath, massage, story, song etc - rather than the milk itself. With our DTs, we did the same bedtime routine and because there was also DD to deal with, used to virtually dump them into their cot and run. So they have always selfsettled. Sometimes they cry for 5 minutes, but by then I'm bathing DD so i just ignore it and in no time they are asleep.
How long do you normally have to cuddle them before they fall asleep? what do you do with the other DT whilst cuddling the first? Have you ever just put them down to see what happens?

MM Sometimes one DT will fall asleep whilst i'm feeding the other. If they have napped in the day they will always be asleep by 7.30pm at the latest. I loosely follow Gina but often walk at lunchtime for a couple of hours as at home they'll only sleep for 40mins, but will sleep for 2 to 3 hours if I push the pram (back to 10stone though from all the walking [cgrin]). I always do a feed, then bath, massage, another feed, then they get grumpy because they are tired, so I cuddle one then the other until they then sleep.
Last night I put them both down and went from one to the other doing PUPD in their cots, it took about 20 minutes to get them both to sleep. I was wondering if that's what people do?

I think PUPD is probably the best way. I'm sure it will only be a matter of time before they start to get it. To be honest, 20 minutes sounds pretty good! Keep going!

In a rush now Lavita but just quickly - mine went down for their sleeps beautifully without seeming to need cuddling until about 5/6 months when suddenly the wheels came off and they just wouldn't settle on their own. Sleep went to pot for AGES, illness after illness obviously didn't help, I was so tired I did whatever seemed to work at any given time which often involved cuddling/feeding them to sleep, co-sleeping, etc etc... eventually I just snapped and thought I need to get this sorted, so copied LL 's 'spaced soothing' method.
It worked almost miraculously with both of them, within a couple of nights. We separated them into different rooms while we nailed it. M got up to 5 mins crying on two occasions and since then (about 9 weeks ago I think) has gone to sleep without any fuss in her cot on her own even when we put her down not very tired. R I was more worried about - not sure why - just wasn't convinced it would work. She only got up to 3 mins crying although it took about 3-4 nights of that before it stopped altogether and now she too will coo and play until she's sleepy enough to drift off.
Obviously this delightfully smug scenario is only the CURRENT situation - as we all know, things can go tits up pretty quickly - but I would definitely highly recommend the spaced soothing. It made me feel in control as I was standing outside their room with my watch timing proceedings, knowing I would go in after x time, and also as I wasn't leaving them for long I never felt I was abandoning them in real distress. But also I think giving them a bit of space to actually learn to(/prove they could) sort themselves out - rather than assuming they wouldn't be able to - was key.

PS they're 11.5 months now - were about 9 months when I started that approach to bedtime.

I don't think you should worry that what you do now will influence what happens later because I've found things change all the time. At the moment, I'm going through a stage where they are really hard to settle at betime (they've just turned 2) which has followed a few months of putting them down and just walking out and them chatting themselves to sleep. As babies it tended to go in cycles that one would need more cuddles than the other at different times. As with everything with twins, I feel that whatever works for you and them at that particularly point in time is fine! I never left mine to cry as it just doesn't feel like the right thing to do and I'm glad that I didn't, even if it has meant more disturbed sleep for me overall (and who knows if it has - you can never go back and try another way to compare can you, so they might have been the same whatever I did). Now that they can talk, I can explain to them that it's time for sleep and I won't come in unless they really need me (of course my definition of need is slightly different, but we are working on that...)