Sleep Part Nine: 'Twas The Night Before Leaving

'Twas the night before leaving to get on a flight.
The boys were put down on a cold winter's night.
We'd fed them with milk and cereal too.
We'd rocked them and kissed them and said, "I love you."

Derek went to bed, while the night shift I took
As I packed up my suitcase into their room I looked
No crying.  No fussing. Sweet dreams filled their heads.
So about 1:00 a.m. I crawled into bed.

In the morn I saw Derek. "What time did they wake?"
He looked at me puzzled.  His head he did shake.
"I planned to ask you the very same thing!"
It was then that we think we heard angels sing!

It appears to be true.  The boys slept through the night.
Eight or nine hours! Oh, what a delight!
Their daddies were happy...no...thrilled is the word.
A full night of sleep is a night that's preferred. 

Since that beautiful morn on December eighteen
We have had fewer wake ups from our two jumping beans.
It's not every night that we don't hear a peep.
But it seems they are learning the value of sleep!

Can you believe it???  After almost 9 months Derek and I are starting to get sleep again.  We don't always have a totally quiet night.  Sometimes we get up to give a little water (or even milk if they're really inconsolable).  Last night was horrible.  Aaron awoke and screamed and fussed for about an hour -- twice!  But we're having more and more nights of waking up just to replace a pacifier, giving them a kiss and a five minute cuddle and watching them fall back to sleep.  I'm starting to feel human again.  I'm remembering what it's like to be happy to wake up in the morning.  I guess when the babies realized the world wasn't going to end on December 21st like the Mayans predicted they decided they could afford to sleep more and see things just in the daytime. 

Although I'm a little late, we wanted to wish you all happy holidays.  Here are some pictures of us celebrating Hannukah and Christmas.

Sleep Part Eight: No Milk For You!

Oops...I forgot to post this.  I wrote this about a week and a half or two weeks ago.  I think it was on December 14th.  Here's another update on sleep.

So we're coming up on nine months old and the babies still aren't sleeping through the night.  However, we have improvement.  Here's an update.

A week or two ago I decided that Daddy was tired of these overnight feedings.  As I mentioned before we have tried giving them more milk, less milk, water, cluster feedings, extra food before bed and nothing seems to work.  One night I decided that they just weren't going to get any milk overnight and I'd see what would happen.  I work as an interpreter and I had recently interpreted for a parent with a baby several months younger than mine.  The doctor said that by 3-4 months babies have enough fat that they can make it through the night without any feedings.  "What???"  I thought.  "These babies have been duping me for half their lives now!" 

So one night, when the boys woke up, I just picked them up, gave them a pacifier and rocked them back to sleep.  I was surprised how well it worked.  It took five minutes for them to calm down but the crying didn't continue as long as I thought. 

Some of you more experienced parents may be saying, "duh...that's how you do it" but I'll tell you that I have tried this method every month or so and usually the crying continued and got louder minute by minute until a bottle made its way into the screaming mouth.

So we haven't had 100% success, but we're getting there.  We are getting longer stretches of sleep and we're able to get them back to sleep quickly (and without milk) pretty often.  Derek and I are getting closer and closer to a full night of sleep.

And if anyone wants to tell me about how sleeping patters get worse from time to time, save it for 2013.  This is the holiday season when we all hope our dreams will come true.  Let me live in my fantasy world that in the next month or so I'll be getting 8 hours of sleep every night for years and years to come! 

Also, for those of you who commented on my recent crawling post, Derek and I did have a baby gate and knew that was the best solution.  We were hoping we wouldn't have to hop over a gate every time we went into the bathroom, but after 2-3 days of Jeff's fascination with a litter box we gave up and installed the gate.  Now Jeff tries to scale the gate.  After just a short time of it being up you can see his tiny foot lift up and search for a foothold as he clings onto the gate hoping not to plop on his butt since he is balancing on one foot.  It's pretty cute.