Polling all twin/multiples parents - did you sleep train? Method? How long did it take?

My Q’s for you:
1. Did you sleep train?
2. What age did you sleep train at?
3. What method did you use? (Extinction, Ferber, etc)
4. How long did it take to sleep train?
5. Did you hire a sleep consultant?

(..with the caveat that I know all babies are different. Our 1st didn’t need to be ST, and I know certain methods won’t work with my current babies).

The longer story: twins are 5.5 mo, sleep in same room, not horrible sleepers, not great either. My husband is on his parental leave and volunteered to start sleep training our twins (he’s better at dealing with the crying than I am). We were on d10 and starting to see major progress with almost no wake-ups until 6-7am. Then they got croup - thus, lots of cuddles. Babies have recovered and we have started sleep training again and it feels like we’re back at step1. I have read up a lot on all the different methods and recs and find it relatively simple (pick your method and stick to it), but also incredibly confusing (every guide/sleep trainer etc has a different set of wake windows. I trust Emily Oster though, who tells me wake windows don’t need to be exact … it’s just a way to remember, hey my baby needs sleep and it’s harder to do that when they’re tired). I follow the twins, triplets, multiples sleep training group on FB and we have followed their schedules to a T , but it’s not a cure. I’m not finding the sleep training subreddit that useful because most people do not have twins.

I don’t know what I plan to get out of these answers - I think some solidarity and maybe some push to actually pay a sleep consultant. Or maybe a magical number of nights that we’re close to, so we just need to stick it out more.

@maddyiscool Our “sleep training” was essentially following the schedules on that Facebook page for twins as well but found that sometimes our twins were slightly ahead and needed a little more wake time than they were suggesting. After going through the 4 month sleep regression I got really serious about sticking to our schedule. I think it took a couple weeks of consistency, maybe about 3 weeks, before they finally slept through the night 7-7 when they were 7 months (5 adjusted).

I think what helped them from waking up before 6am was offering a dream feed. We always did a dream feed around 10pm from about 7-9 months. Without that they were always waking up between 4-5am for a bottle. Eventually one night we dropped the dream feed and they slept no problem!

@kaat1623 Okay, good to know. Since they say sleepy cues are unreliable on that group I have a hard time knowing what is the appropriate WW for my twins. We’ve started at the one for their adjusted age and adjust if ever week to slide along to the next one… but currently without too much success.

And we do a dreamfeed too! We also kept a MOTN feed in there at 4am but recently removed it because if we fed them at 4am they were not hungry at 7am.

@kaat1623 Thanks for the idea of a dream feed. My wife and I are struggling to figure a sleep schedule out. We're at month 2. Thanks to you and OP for some solid responses.

@kaat1623 Can I ask what Facebook page for twins you’re referring to?

@pastorb https://m.facebook.com/groups/157633598090301/?ref=share&mibextid=uc01c0

@maddyiscool We’re not. Maybe we’re just lucky? Once they fall asleep, they go into their cribs for the night. We feed them when they wake up hungry and then they go back into their cribs. It works for us so we’ll continue to do so until it doesn’t.

@lilly45 I can confirm you are lucky !

@maddyiscool We did sleep training at just before 6 months. We did a modified Ferber. They were trained within 3 days. We had to start stretching out our check in times because they didn’t calm down when we went in, just escalated.

Since that time, they sleep 11-12 hours a night about 85% of the time (they’ll be 3 in July). Sleep gets messed up with teething or illness or time changes, but we’ve never had to “re-train”, as we just stick to our regular routine and it sorts itself out.

Also as an aside, Emily Oster has zero scientific/medical training, she’s an economist, and has an extreme amount of problematic views (around COVID, around telling pregnant women hey maybe it’s okay to drink alcohol, and she has argued that it wasn’t economical to treat HIV/ and AIDS patients in Africa. Just to name a few). I would talk to a pediatrician and/or a sleep consultant before listening to anything she has said. I have found wake windows to be what makes or break sleep. An overtired child won’t sleep well and children like patterns and predictability. Putting a kid down that’s too tired will result in a terrible time putting them down. When our kids are late for bedtime or nap, it’s difficult to impossible to put them down without issue.

@matt97 Thanks for the data point! We’ve done modified ferber too because they are rolling and need to be flipped over or unstuck from their crib (but like yours - ours don’t calm down when we’re in there unless i literally just rock them to sleep). Since ours are taking way longer than 3d to sleep train, maybe I need to rethink their schedule.

@matt97 Re: emily oster. I hadn’t heard of that claim (“she has argued that it wasn’t economical to treat HIV/ and AIDS patients in Africa”) and wanted to read the article first. My takeaway is that she advocates for other measures (prevention via education, treatment of SDIs - which increase the risk of HIV infection, etc) rather than investing all money in expensive antiretroviral drugs. Investing in preventative measures could potentially result in extending or saving more lives than just treating HIV+ individuals with antiretrovirals. I am a scientist (immunologist) and I appreciate that she sifts through the published (or unpublished) studies that often have poor study design, but somehow still inform a lot of decisions around pregnancy/early childhood. A lot of her books are written in a way that just summarizes/presents the data, giving you the space to make your own decisions based on the data. To each their own.

@maddyiscool As a healthcare provider, I completely disagree. Those expensive drugs literally save lives and allow patients to live normal lives. Preventative measures aren’t going to save parents and children who are actively dying. Not to mention those expensive drugs can prevent vertical transmission from mother to baby and community spread.

She appeals to the upper middle class parents and let’s them feel okay about things like drinking during pregnancy and taking no COVID precautions during the height of the pandemic and appeals to the “mom guilt” but everyone working in healthcare alongside me literally can’t stand the grip she has on parents.

I can look through and interpret studies as well, but I don’t go publish books on fields I didn’t do expert level education on or years of particular research on. So yeah she’s highly problematic but whatever makes you feel best I guess.

@matt97 I agree with you that it’s not right, humane or ethical to not give people life saving treatment. But I also think different research proposals can offer complimentary solutions. After a bit of a deep dive into her ted talk and media circuit around this time - yeah, I don’t agree with a lot of what she’s saying.

However, I think she’s equipped to critique+summarize data/studies to help distill info relevant for parents. For medical-specific questions she always includes medical experts’ opinions. TBH, zero of my kid’s peds have any relevant info on sleep training. But I trust their expertise/advice on a ton of other things. Heidi Murkoff, author of the what to expect books, started the same way - she was a mom that didn’t have enough info and so she wrote a book…

I agree with some of her stance on COVID precautions with children. I do think children were glossed over in many policy decisions and we’re still dealing with those repercussions - test scores and hospitalizations for respiratory illnesses this winter are 2 big ones. Anecdotally, a lot of my friends/family with school aged children are still dealing with issues stemming from their kids being out of school for so long. And my children have been hospitalized multiple times this winter from resp. viruses. But I understand the other side to these points because I lost someone very close to me to COVID. It’s such a nuanced topic and discussion. Anyways, her books and her blog provide data to a lot of questions I have that help me be better informed.

@matt97 I want to start this by saying that we RELIGOUSLY kept a synchronized schedule with our twins so that might have some bearing on the outcome. I used a modified Ferber method at 6 months. It took about 3 nights (of which I was miserable and cried outside their door probably as much as they cried). They have slept through the night (12 hours back then) ever since. They are 12 now and I haven never had to retrain them, they now sleep about 9 hours and they don't fight it when I tell them it's bedtime. They did go through a phase of fighting bed time around potty training and around preschool.

With my single, who is 5 now, I didn't sleep train and she didn't sleep through the night until almost 4, I couldn't go through the crying outside the door again. She sleeps fine now and I wasn't working while she was little so it was OK for us.

@maddyiscool Yes I sleep trained both twins. We did very gentle Ferber and started at 4 months but they were already in their own cribs in their own rooms at that time. Sleep training has been ongoing tailored to their nap/overnight needs as they grow. I continue to train even now but I would say it took me a solid month to get them to independently fall asleep. We did contact naps exclusively and lots of rocking before bedtime until about 8 months when I felt they could do it themselves fully - fall asleep independently. So we tackled night sleep first at 4 months then did naps at 8 months. I did not hire a consultant, I kinda view them mixed as far as some are predatory and others are truly wanting to help people. Honestly I just read so much about it I basically could be a sleep consultant myself at this point.

Good sleep is a gift I gave my children. They are not damaged because I sleep trained them. Getting deep into the science behind sleep then taking it further into infant sleep was not fun by any means but I made it my mission as a new Mom to focus on eating and sleeping and I really feel my hard work paid off.

My babies walk now to their cribs when I sing the corresponding lullabye. They ask for naps. Its amazing. They love to eat, play, sleep and it almost killed me but I am proud of the fact I master all of those areas.

Now I have no idea whats gonna go on when they get their toddler beds I will tackle all that closer to that time.

@gladysbrierley That’s amazing, and good sleep is the best gift you can give! Thank you for all the tricks and details!