Sleep training twins - same room?

[BellePack]

I’m after some advice please. If you have done controlled crying with twins did you keep them in the same room as each other? I’ve read advice about keeping them together and splitting them up. DD is the worse sleeper, wakes up multiple times and is a shrieker. DS2 can generally be settled back to sleep, if he wakes up, with a dummy. They both sleep in my room but will shortly be going into their own room as almost 6 months.

They both really fight going down at bedtime but are a dream for daytime naps ...

I’m also nervous about them waking DS1 when we start controlled crying

Thanks
BP

We did controlled crying with my one twin and we moved the other one out of the room to let us do it properly.

It really changed everything for us, we now have 2 good sleepers, but we have kept them in their own rooms as they do sleep better apart.

We sleep trained ours in the same room, at the same time. Figured we might as well crack it all in one go (rather than having another battle to get them used to sleeping in one room again; long term, separating them wasn’t an option.) To our surprise it wasn’t too bad at all, and they didn’t really wake each other up. (We have white noise, which helps too.) They didn’t wake their older sister either, although she was in a different room on the other side of the house.

It took about a week, and we’ve never looked back. They’ve been fab little sleepers ever since, and it saved my sanity. (Although they were older than yours - nearly 1.)

Thanks mummy2 and beyond. What methods did you use? And how old were yours munny2?

We did fairly ‘classic’ controlled crying - going in and shushing them with a hand on the back, after 2 mins, then four, then eight, etc, up to 15 mins and then after 15 going back to the beginning. We only had to go up to 15 mins for the first couple of nights, and it got much easier after that. The night wakings stopped within a day or two; the early morning wakings (4:30/5ish) took longer to crack, but the whole thing was done in a week or so. We did it on the advice of a HV, who was fab and helped us through it. She did say, tho, that she wouldn’t advise it for younger babies, so I don’t know how appropriate that would be for six month olds, or whether you’d be better waiting a couple of months (seems like forever when you’re sleep deprived, I know!)

They were just over one when we separated them. They're now just over two and overall very good sleepers.

The one was always a great sleeper, and would just settle straight away, the other was a huge challenge, constantly going in, having to pat him to sleep, feed him to sleep etc...

We tried all the more gentle techniques first, going to sit in his room but no talking or contact, going back in and saying it was time to sleep and leaving again...but in the end we tried crying it out and it was the best thing we did.

First night I cried on the other side of the door with him, think it took about 40-50 mins for him to give up. At no point was it hysterical crying, just wingy, I felt awful but he had a full night sleep and woke up a much happier boy for a proper sleep. The crying time reduced each night and he was always well rested and happy in the morning, so I really feel it was the best thing we did for him, and us!