Routines (again!) for 11mo twins and bedtime on your own?

[ClairesTravellingCircus]

Hello

New year new life (hopefully) filled with sleep!!

I have decided I need to give more structure to my dts very loose routine in the hope that nap and sleepyimes become more predictable!

So as usual I am looking for ideas to copy inspiration from the fantastic mnetters!

Also how do you do bedtime on your own??dh us never home in time and I have been doing staggered bedtimes but it takes forever.
I am planning to stop breastfeeding as well (wish me good luck) and need to find ways of getting dtg to sleep without feeding so might as well do everything in one go!

So any advice (or offerings of and) is very welcome!!

Thanks

Ps got a bit carried away with the exclamation marks... Definitely need more sleep...

hey claire, no advice i'm afraid!! but have some .

i'll be watching with interest though, would also like some advice, particularly how to do bath and bedtime on my own as dp often gets home abit late and i try to hold out til he's gets back to do it together cos can't face it on my own but definitely not ideal....

Hi, My husband has been working away mon-Fri since my twins were 6 months old and my eldest was 2 years old. (20 months gap) My twins will be 3 in April!

My boy/girl twins share a room. I put them to bed at the same time at around 6.30pm. (or 6pm if i had a bad day!) I would read them a story, and put them in their cots. I may have had to go and up and down the stairs a few times but they were really good and settled most nights. I had always put them down at the same time since birth. I got a bit obsessed with routines. lol It was when they were 14 months old i had to put them into beds as my girl twin worked out how to climb out of her cot and that was when the fun really began....
If you have any questions just ask.

Bath times... now that was interesting. I used to put all three of them in one cot so they could play. I would then take one child at a time and bath them. Sometimes they would cry but i didn't really have a choice, i just made sure they had lots of toys to play with, and having my eldest helped. It took a while, but i didn't like having two or three in the bath at once being on my own. Once they got a bit older, i would close us all in the bathroom and bath them all together and that is how i am still doing it. Although i have put locks on my bedroom and spare room so when they get out the bath the only rooms they can play in while i dry the other two are their own.

I hope this is of some help.

Thanks Sophie

I imagine my main problem is they don't self settle so just putting them down doesn't work, but I am working on that!

Baths, yes sometimes I get the help of my 11 year old, but she often has lots of homework so feel really bad that she has to work late in the evening because of me.. and likewise having them both in the bath is quite dangerous now, as they both stand up and don't quite understand that it's dangerous yet .

Can you be a bit more specific (sorry), was it dinner, bath, milk book bed? or something similar? Sorry I am so tired that I really need someone to come and tell me what to do, as I can't even decide what to cook for dinner let alone on a routine for the babies.

Many thanks

and thanks for the Nãncy, greatly appreciated!

Hi

I have 13 mo twin non ID girls. We:

5pm dinner
Play
5.50pm bath together. All on the bathroom. Get one out, dry in bathroom keeping eyes on one in the bath. Let dry clothes one out in hall - their bedroom wandering and dry and clothe the 2nd.

Downstairs for tidy toys time. Then In the Night Garden plus bedtime milk.

6.50 pm upstairs to bed, brush teeth, change etc...

7pm lights out.

I tried to do story time but I think they are too little and both grab the book and overpower me (!) so we are doing In the Night Garden until they are ready to really follow the story and not keep tearing the book to shreds!!!!

Has worked for us so far but I am a lover of routine - sad I know - so they are v used to it and I think know what's coming next.

Hi there,
I have 15 month old twin girls and an older one - which probably helped me get mine into a routine early on.
In the day at 11 months they had a morning nap around 10am and an afternoon nap around 1.30pm/ 2pm.
In the evening we do tea at 5pm-ish - but it can slip a bit. They go up for their bath at 6.30pm and this is followed by milk (they are both on a bottle in the evening). They get a teeth clean too and these days a book or two. They then get put into their cots. One sometimes cries for a minute or two. If she cries for more than 5-10 minutes I go in calm her down and go out again - repeating if necessary.
I wondered what you meant about getting dgt to sleep without b'feeding. Do you feed her until she falls asleep? If so, I wonder if you might want to try to get her to go down awake first before cutting the feed completely? I only say this because if she does not settle you will not know if it is cus she is missing the milk or cus she does not want to go to sleep without you. At least if she had had the milk, then you would know you were training her to self-settle and it might be easier to do the controlled crying thing.
You sound like you are doing a great job. If I am doing bedtime alone I do find it stressful, particularly at the end of a long day.

and
We did baths every other day, dinner, i would clear up while they listened to lullabies or chill out music to try and get them to.......chill out, bath, supper/milk while watching INTNG, story then bed. Story wold be while they were in their cots because as another poster mentioned they would try to wrestle the book off me to chew it. After a story we sing twinkle twinkle and that's it.
Bedtime is a bit of a slog on your own, it does get easier my 2 are 30 months now and bedtimes are no where near as hard as they were when they were babies.
At that age I think they were having a small nap after breakfast, they only needed 30 Maybe 45 mins then up to go to a playgroup or park, home for lunch then a long nap - around 2 hours.
I hope you get some inspiration and more importantly some sleep.

My 2 are in cotbeds now so it is a bit easier, but I often lie on the floor and stroke their hair for a while before I leave, In our case it's because they run riot at bedtime take the mattresses of the beds and dive bomb on to them, but it means by the time I leave them they are settled and relaxed.

toomuchpink I meant I am trying to feed her and not let her fall off to sleep, I am also actually trying to cut down on bfeeding, so I am giving her a bottle, then when she's had enough I top up woth breast. She was a total bottle refusnik but is slowly increasing quantities, so we are getting there.

It is the actual falling asleep that she finds hard, I know she is a thumbsucker at heart (she used to at 3-4 months but mysteriously stopped), and needs the sucking, but will not take a dummy at all. I am now following Pantley's method of getting the nipple out before she is actually asleep, and sometimes I manage just rocking, b ut as soon as she touches the mattress she starts crying again, then I am afraid she'll wake her brother and I scoop her up and take her to my room.

What I am struggling with re our routine, is that after bath I normally leave one dowstairs with my older dds while I give milk to the other (usually dtb as he falls asleep quicker so then I can focus on the little monkey that is dtg), settle him (a bit of rocking), then go back to fetch dtg, but this means that just before bed she is in bright light, tv on, giggling with her sisters! I tried keeping them both upstairs tonight, but I had to choose to feed one first and the other was screaming blue murder in the cot, which was also upsetting the twin I was feeding!

Hope this makes sense, I just can't see how I can put them to bed at the same time...not yet at least.

It's wearing me down because it takes ages, and d1&2 are having dinner alone while I do bedtime and I rarely spend any time with them without the twins.

I am not in the uk so we don't get ITNG is it good for babies this age?

Oh and bath also can't do it on my own, today I was drying and dressing dtb and dtg kept standing up/crawling in the bath, ended face down a couple of times. Couldn't have done it wihtout dd2 (stupid non slip bath means I can't use bathseats/bath mat on it, but they still slip!)

princessmonoke have I really all that to dread look forward to??

thanks all, this week I am writing down all naps/wakings and then see if I can come up with a plan. Why all the books always fail to mention how to apply their methods with twains?

Claire I used to feed them on my bed and have a bubble machine on, nice dim lights, one would lie there near me where i could stop them from crawling off the bed while I fed the other then swooped. This was up until around 9 months so my 2 may not have been as active as yours are now but it might be something you could adapt ?

Hi there! Excuse typos as on phone.... Not read all the posts but re bath time we bought a mother care twin aqua pod and use that at bath time. Been using it since they have been able to sit up! Its really great. but now Dt 2 keeps crawling out but I do my best to keep her in line.
Mine are15 months old now. Will try write more again. In hospital waiting for DH to come out of surgery! Thankfully all went well. Good luck with bedtime!

HI thanks for suggestions,

unfortunately ahving them both on my bed is not an option as teh free one would just roll off the bed! (or wedge her head through the bars of my bedhead - I am looking at you dtg!)

And no baths seats will stay on our bath, the suctions pads do not stick, I ahve learnt this after a diving accident from dtg!

first half of the night was pretty good, not a peep from either til 2am, the rest is to forget though!

It is really stressful having one crying, waiting. I remember it well. Mine are 15mths and have held their own bottles for quite a while now. It was a big milestone when that happened. I EBF for at least six mths and one was difficult to transfer to the bottle but now she loves her bottle.
I reckon in a matter of weeks you will be finding it much easier. I would honestly not worry too much about one waking the other etc. I would do some controlled crying with both if necessary. I know it is horrible. But at least while it is going on you can go and sit with your other children and know you are giving them some attention. It might taken an hour the first night or two, but the chances are that after a week life will be a bit easier for everyone.
I admire you managing them all going into the evening, I'm not saying it is easy. I really struggled through the first year. Not long after mine turned one, things started to improve significantly. I hope your bedtimes do too.

Hi claire just wanted to quickly say as our dts are the same age exactly my dts really like itng they do calm down with it strangely so if you can get it on dvd or something it could help? I have one that I could copy if I could work it out and send it to you if you pm your address. Or save that just sing lots of nice little songs all the way through bedtime until you are hoarse my dts (dt1 is the worst grizzly baby he is always crying and dreadful seperaration anxiety sometimes he glues himself to my leg the list goes on) love nick nack paddy wack and I know a bear you don't know .

Oh and yes I do think cc is effective. Sometimes they fall asleep so quickly you can't believe it! You may be surprised...

claire i know that u have other dc the same as me and i just wanted to say i let my dts cry if i need to do something with my other dcs as my dh works shifts so is very often not here at bedtime, i have left them since they were very little and i think that has helped but you just dont have enough hands do you i do keep going in so they know im around.....im sure you will find a way that works for you

I bath DTs in the morning every other day, the bedtime routine just felt too long and as though we neglected DS1. It does reduce the stress in the evening but not helpful if you work.

DTs settled from early on, I bottle feed so could lie them on me to feed before sleeping. DTS is usually the more difficult one to get to sleep, we did CC lite, when he is more difficult to get down. Leave for 5 mins or so depending on the cries, if getting really distressed go in and settle sooner, if settling leave him a bit longer.

We put a travel cot in the spare room and we move him in there if he is going to wake DTD (don't want that mayhem) so could you do something similar on a temp basis?