Give your best advice to an expecting father

Originally Posted by gdl203

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Thanks povar - much appreciated

On another note, quick show of hands: which of you guys had to do sleep training? What method did you use and at what age did you do it? One of our boys doesn't need it and sleeps through the night now (with an occasional 2 min wake-up to get his pacifier), but the other still cries every two hours and wants to be fed (although it is clear he does not need it).

Wife needs to go back to work in 10 days and we'd like to sleep train him and everyone recommends crying it out / Ferber - we're just not sure whether 3.5 months is too young for that stuff. It's also

to hear the cries like that

Sleep training is difficult but most often the right thing to do. 3.5 months is a bit young though imo - especially if he's a twin and perhaps smaller than the average 3.5 mo old. Also depends on whether he's bottle or breast fed. We started with my son waaaay too late (like 9 mos but he was exclusively breast fed) and paid the price. It usually takes less than a week, albeit a painful one. The first night he cried virtually the entire night. The second night for 1-2hrs; the 3rd night for like 20-30 min and by the 4th night he barely cried at all. My daughters were much easier and were sleeping through the night early on.

I think four months is where you can start letting them cry i.e. they should feed enough that they can last through the night without feeding again. That said, every child is different and you should get your pediatrician's advice imo.

The most important thing is consistency with training. You can undo weeks of training by giving in one night. I can recommend this book we used, which was very helpful (better than Ferber imo). http://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Sleep-.../dp/0449004023

Thanks E. Pediatrician said at the 3-month visit that they were big enough and cleared to sleep train (if we decide to do so). They were around 14 lbs then and probably another 1/2 to 3/4 lbs now.

We may start sleep training this week and see how it goes - we have a baby nurse who will stay with us during the week to oversee that. I just can't see how it could work when wife goes back to work in a sleep-deprived mode...

Originally Posted by gdl203

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Thanks E. Pediatrician said at the 3-month visit that they were big enough and cleared to sleep train (if we decide to do so). They were around 14 lbs then and probably another 1/2 to 3/4 lbs now.

We may start sleep training this week and see how it goes - we have a baby nurse who will stay with us during the week to oversee that. I just can't see how it could work when wife goes back to work in a sleep-deprived mode...

If they're big enough and you need to do it, then I can only recommend you fully commit to doing it if you are prepared to let him cry (yes, letting your child cry is tougher than most things you'll ever do ). Sleep training is an all or nothing method and you'll cause more problems if you don't stick to the plan or think picking him up once won't be an issue.

Good luck with it G. I wonder how his poor twin will fare with his brother's crying.

We fenced off part odf the living room, and put a bunch of pillows and mattresses down. As they got bigger, they got more of the living room, now they have all but about 9 sq feet which is a zone for my son to play with toys that they aren't allowed to touch.

We also used bouncy chairs for a while.

Originally Posted by gdl203

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You forgot to mention two babies !... Thanks for the feedback. We were wondering if getting two lightweight single ones would be better than the twin one. The thing is that it will be mostly used for non-travel purposes (e.g. for the nany to be able to safely deal with them one at a time at home). More of a portable playpen, rather than a portable crib. In that case, I wonder if this one wouldn't work well for two boys (38x38 seems like enough room)...

Thanks GT - we decided to go with a fixed playpen as well (the type of fence you can enlarge by adding panels over time). I think that's the right solution for this specific use. When we start traveling, we'll have to solve that other issue...

Greg, we did sleep training, I don't remember at what age. The most important thing was to get both on the same schedule as quick as possible, and we had a huge weight differnce between the twins. If you want, pm me and I can have our wives talk - my wife is in a few moms of twins groups, and she has a great deal of knowledge about this stuff.

Globe - they were on the same schedule for most of their 3 months but over the last 3 or 4 weeks, Leo has stopped waking up for his night feeding. So we can't really keep them on the same schedule any more, they are evolving differently with one feeling safe and autonomous and the other needing attention and reassurance through the night.

My wife feels very strongly on this - in her opinion one of the most important things is keeping them on the same schedule, mostly because it becomes very very hard to get your own life on track with sleep and so on until they are on schedule. We had the same issues, and my wife really worked at getting them back on sychronized schedule. It has worked out well for us, so far.

Originally Posted by gdl203

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Globe - they were on the same schedule for most of their 3 months but over the last 3 or 4 weeks, Leo has stopped waking up for his night feeding. So we can't really keep them on the same schedule any more, they are evolving differently with one feeling safe and autonomous and the other needing attention and reassurance through the night.

Originally Posted by globetrotter

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My wife feels very strongly on this - in her opinion one of the most important things is keeping them on the same schedule, mostly because it becomes very very hard to get your own life on track with sleep and so on until they are on schedule. We had the same issues, and my wife really worked at getting them back on sychronized schedule. It has worked out well for us, so far.

Sorry but I don't understand what that means. Day schedule is something we can control but if one of them sleeps through the night, we certainly are not going to wake the other one up to "feed" him ?

Originally Posted by gdl203

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Sorry but I don't understand what that means. Day schedule is something we can control but if one of them sleeps through the night, we certainly are not going to wake the other one up to "feed" him

?

sorry - asked my wife for clarification and she said that yes, at 3 months she didn't make them stick to a night schedule, and she says they are too young to make them cry through the night.

Our little boy is 7 months now and I can tell you that the best thing we ever did was learn to let him cry himself to sleep at night.
At 3 months he started to sleep in his own crib. The 1st night we put him in, he cried and my wife and I went in to check on him, picked him up, cradled him...you get the idea. It was just heart breaking to hear him cry. We did a little research and most books said your baby needs to learn how to soothe himself to sleep. So the next night same thing; he cried and rather than going in to pick him up we let him cry. Surprisingly after about an hour of crying he stopped.

From that point forward he has been a pretty good sleeper. For a few months after this we would go in the room and give him a pacifier if he cried, but nothing more than that. No picking up or anything of that nature. To this day when he cries it is only for a minute or so and it stops. He pretty much sleeps nonstop from 7:30 PM to 8AM.

It's hard work and difficult to do this, but I promise it will pay off in the long run.

gdl,

Sleep training is an extraordinarily vexed issue for parents.

Our first child was a terrible sleeper - needed to be breastfed to sleep, would wake up every couple of hours to feed, needed to know that someone was sleeping near him or he would wake up. As a result, my wife had to go to bed with our son at about 7pm ever night, but she got hardly any sleep as she kept on being woken up to feed him. I would get up at about 4am to look after him as he would be wide awake for a few hours. My wife would crash for about three hours and then I'd have to wake her up to go to work.

By the time he was seven months old, we were both suffering from chronic exhaustion and my wife was seriously depressed. We decided that something had to be done, but my wife could not face the idea of standing by whilst our child cried and so "controlled crying" to get him to sleep was out of the question for her. Instead, we adopted an idea set out by a (now deceased) British child health nurse named Tracey Hogg (whose nickname was, apparently, the Baby Whisperer). Hogg proposed a more gentle way of teaching your child to sleep, known as the "pick up put down" (or PUPD) method. Whilst it was very demanding and exhausting - both physically and mentally - for us, it also seemed to us that it was less emotionally taxing on our son. I took a weeks' holiday and we dedicated ourselves to using the PUPD method to train him. Within four days, he was sleeping through the night for 11 to 12 hours at a stretch (this was at 7 months of age). To this day (now 3.5 years old) he remains an extremely good sleeper.

Anyway, different strokes for different folks. Some people have no qualms whatsoever about using the controlled crying method of sleep training, other people are distressed by the very thought. There are some different methods out there, though, so it can pay to do some research. Whichever you choose, best of luck to you. I never realised just how appalling sleep deprivation can be until my son came along. It really is torture.

Surprisingly, though, our daughter (who is now 16 months old) never had any sleep problems whatsoever. She started sleeping through the night of her own volition somewhere between six to eight weeks of age and she sleeps up to 13 hours a night. Babies really do have their own personalities and those personalities start to manifest themselves from a very early age.

If you're interested in reading more about Hogg's "pick up put down" method, I think that there's stuff on the internet. She also co-wrote several books before her death.

I thought I would bump this to ask other fathers what they did when their toddler climbed out of the crib. Got a call today from the nanny saying that she heard one of the boys screaming during the nap, went to the bedroom and saw him hanging out of the crib, holding to the rail. Evidently, he can now climb out of it.

Some say it means it's time for a toddler bed but this little guy always takes 20mn to fall asleep so I don't want him to get out of bed and be miserable all day because he lacks sleep...

What did you guys do? When is it the right time to graduate to a toddler bed?

Originally Posted by gdl203

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I thought I would bump this to ask other fathers what they did when their toddler climbed out of the crib. Got a call today from the nanny saying that she heard one of the boys screaming during the nap, went to the bedroom and saw him hanging out of the crib, holding to the rail. Evidently, he can now climb out of it.

Some say it means it's time for a toddler bed but this little guy always takes 20mn to fall asleep so I don't want him to get out of bed and be miserable all day because he lacks sleep...

What did you guys do? When is it the right time to graduate to a toddler bed?

sorry, your life is over as you know it. at least for a while. as soon a my son could climb out we got him a toddler bed, I was worried that he would get hurt climing out. on the other hand, with the girls they are great at not leaving their beds without permission. the boy was a little less good, but not bad.