The sleep of the twins: from zero to one year

Newborns do not distinguish between day and night, nor do they perceive the different phases of the day, but simply react to the stimuli that they become familiar with in the first days of life. Slowly they begin to perceive hunger, tiredness, heat or cold and they manifest it in their own way, with crying, graduating its intensity and subsiding when their need is satisfied.

When newborns are twins, these first life experiences are lived in pairs, but usually not in a perfectly synchronized way. It is unlikely that the two children feel the same needs at the same time and that they respond in the same way to external stimuli and interventions.

They can be in tune with each other , they can be able to “expect”, to look for each other involuntarily and to calm each other with mere presence, but being distinct individuals with their own peculiarities, it is normal that each of them grows up with own rhythms.

Here then is that being able to create a routine capable of combining the needs of twins and bringing their wake-sleep phases closer becomes the first goal of every great-mother.

Create a routine for two

From the day they return home, we work to give them a cadence of times, which makes them serene, which orients them throughout the day and makes them perceive that dedicated moments exist.

In the manuals, they recommend getting children used to a simple routine right from the start, without strict rules, but made up of sweet rituals, repeated every day and with the same pattern , so that the children know what to expect after each phase and adapt to it. with complete peace of mind.

The night

The nocturnal routine should bear fruit around four months, when babies are able to tolerate longer breaks between feeds. For example, taking a bath in the evening, cradling them with the same song and placing them in the cot in the same way should allow them to gradually get used to the idea of ​​the night as a longer period of rest.

Night feedings should take place in dim light with muffled noises and suffused lights (and it will come naturally to you to do so, because you will be the first to be stunned by lack of sleep and eager to return to total darkness and the quiet of the night) and minimizing the times (already get ready sterilized bottles for supplementation or with pumped milk during the day if you use a breast pump). The children should therefore remain almost asleep during the meal and should then be more easily able to fall asleep again.

In the manuals it is recommended to put the children to sleep in the cot if possible from the very beginning, so that they associate the cot with the moment of relaxation and bedtime and that when they wake up they are not frightened by having been moved during sleep. Putting the babies to sleep in the cot at the beginning can mean arming yourself with a lot of patience and getting ready to cuddle them for half an hour before seeing them blissfully breathing lightly…

Naps during the day

During the day, the children will dictate the rhythms based on the stages of growth , with several hours dedicated to bedtime in the very early stages and gradually more spaces dedicated to activity and to the discovery of the surrounding world in the following months. In their discovery, they should be helped with moments of play, moments of going out in the open air, moments dedicated to bath time and moments of rest, always on the basis of a routine studied by the mother and adhering to the needs of the little ones.

There are no precise moments and obligatory times, but there is the constancy of a mother, her ability to understand what makes her children more serene and to replicate the pattern from day to day.

Children should get used to associating objects, environments and sounds with the different phases, maintaining some key moments during the day.

So even later in time, when naps become only mid-morning or early afternoon breaks, children should calmly accept being placed in the crib/stroller or cot at more or less the same times and should fall into a relaxed sleep, precisely because we are aware that those moments are those dedicated to recovering energy.

If the routine falters…

In all of this the conditional is a must, because beyond the textbooks, much depends on the nature of the children, their ability to tolerate noise and external stimuli and their health.

Some babies are more prone than others to regurgitation, colic, or are so sensitive that they wake up with a start from a burp that seemed lost, from a dirty diaper, from the noise of the little brother moving in the cot… just the time spent with them it allows the mother to grasp its peculiarities and needs, to vary the planned routine by adapting it to the sensitivity of the child and gradually to the needs he demonstrates as he grows up.

Over the months, the number of meals at night or wake-up calls due to hunger will physiologically decrease, but the sensitivity to external noises and the ability to move while sleeping will increase and, alas, also that of annoying each other, of getting stuck with one’s feet the bars of the cot (in defiance of the bumpers that will somehow be able to get around or pull down… ).

If at the beginning the twins generally fall asleep better in a single cot, probably after three months, they will be better off in separate cots (perhaps adjacent to “feel” close, but distinct), so as not to push each other and not roll over on each other. ‘other

Managing four little feet in two cots that just don’t want to lie down peacefully when falling asleep is not always easy, but it fuels the mother’s hope of minimizing subsequent awakenings.

My experience

In my experience, bedtimes have always been difficult: in the beginning, hunger awakes were frequent and never synchronized, despite my attempts to impose similar rhythms, with Davide being unpredictable, always hungry and afflicted with regurgitation (unfortunately, based on regurgitation, the length of the sleep break also varied, with the stomach in an uproar and the nervous crying easy).

As the months went by, the regurgitation problem decreased and the consequent regularization of meals, his desire to discover the world increased, the difficulty in abandoning himself to sleep even when literally already with his eyes closed and his inability to remain still for half a minute even while sleeping…

Giulia, routine personified at the beginning, often capable of adapting to her little brother’s rhythms and falling asleep almost by herself with the sole pretension of being positioned lying down in a cradle in the dark and in silence, has become, if possible, more rowdy than her brother towards the six months, when he began to rebel against schedules and schemes and to escape by wriggling from his arms in the imposed rest times.

So I’m not a good example to talk about on the topic of nanne, and I don’t claim to give advice, as I need comparisons and suggestions first…

We have spent very few whole nights in a year of life as a foursome and two-hour naps during the day have always been a mirage. I can’t tell you where parental responsibility ends and the unstoppable nature of children begins. In our case, we tried different methods, read different manuals and applied different techniques, sticking to routines that suited our children for a little too long, again changing.

Thinking back to certain episodes, I feel like smiling even as I write… aware that next night too I’ll have to run from the master bedroom to the children’s bedroom to appease one cry in time before the tears become two…

The only advice I can give you is to also experience this “being two” without greater expectations than what your twins can do and to worry only about the fact that in waking moments they prove to be serene and lively.

I can reassure you that somehow you get used to this too, the lack of sleep and still having to find a lot of energy in the morning and during the day. Having said that, if from tomorrow my little ones decide to sleep a little more, I would be really grateful!