October --Multiples Mom Chat

[BeachBum]

Welcome to October!
Here is a link to last month's thread

http://www.windsorpeak.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=335513

[BeachBum]

sleep
We had to separate ours (they are 8 mo now). They definitely woke each other up--contrary to what the books say!

Yes, I'm one who said I followed what Weissbluth says about sleeping and no mine aren't STTN. But I do feel like sleeping (and attitude when awake) is so much better since following the book.


As for us--
Keep your fingers crossed. We are going on a cruise in a few weeks. It will either be a much needed reprieve or a very expensive mistake! HA HA.
We are doing Disney and they have the (pay) nursery as well as a splash area for babies. I plan on spending a lot of time on our balcony while the babies sleep. :)
Hopefully it will be a fun family time as well as time for DH and I to connect....I feel like we haven't had an adult conversation in months.

[Momof3Labs]

Is it already October? I go back to work in 6.5 weeks - wah.

Still pumping and bottle feeding here. I'm almost ready to give up hope that they will nurse. But now that I'm on Zoloft, I think that I'm okay with that!

[fivi2]

Have fun on your cruise! I think it will be a blast.

My cute story for the day:

As I posted in the Lounge, DD1 is giving me a hard time. In a moment of bad parenting the other day, I (permanently) took away one of her stuffed toys - a rabbit (not a top tier toy, more like a mid-level toy). So today she starts asking for it and gets upset when I tell her it isn't coming back. Her twin disappears while I am comforting DD1.

A little bit later DD2 shows up with a "rabbit" she has created out of construction paper. She has glued shapes together (circle head, rectangle body, triangle ears, long rectangle legs) and drawn a face on it. She hands it to her sister and says: "Here DD1, I made you a new bunny. We'll figure out how to make it fuzzy tomorrow."

It was the most adorable thing ever!

[fivi2]

Is it already October? I go back to work in 6.5 weeks - wah.

Still pumping and bottle feeding here. I'm almost ready to give up hope that they will nurse. But now that I'm on Zoloft, I think that I'm okay with that!

I probably mentioned this already, but...

I was going insane trying to pump and nurse, etc. (And I only have the twins). It lifted a huge weight when I decided to quit attempting to direct nurse and "just" pump. Honestly, I understand the arguments that it is easier to nurse once they get the hang of it, but for me it made a huge difference once I made that decision.

Pumping sucked, I won't lie. But I lasted 11 months, and I think that if I had tried to continue nursing and pumping I would have given up much sooner. It was hard because it seems that the goal of most people is to work toward nursing, but honestly I think the best decision I made was just to pump.

Please, don't think I am trying to discourage you. A lot of people can make nursing work. But, it is okay if you choose to do something else!

[missliss55]

I agree with you. I pump and bottle feed my 4 month old twins. I would have loved to breastfeed my twins like I did my older girls, but it just didn't work out. My DH keeps reminding me that they are getting breast milk and that is what is important. I felt very free after I decided to just pump. I think you have to do what works best for you. I am also not opposed to formula. I am going to try and pump as long as I can, but with 4 children under the age of 6 life sure is crazy. :-)

[BeachBum]

fivi2--that is such a cute, sweet story. what a great sister!

[dowlinal]

My boys are four months now and I am really starting to enjoy them. Today they both gave me my first kisses from them. It completely melted my heart. I also think it's really sweet that their first kisses ever went to each other.

I am having a minor nursing problem. Nick won't take a bottle from me unless I've already nursed him, so when I am alone with the boys, I always seem to end up nursing Nick a lot more than Alex. I can hold both boys and nurse Nick while bottlefeeding Alex, but not the opposite. Nick probably gets 80% breastmilk while I think Alex is only getting like 50-60%. I don't know what to do about this or if I should just be happy that we're still getting by.

[Melaine]

I also gave up nursing because neither of them were actually latching properly, and pumped and fed from about 2 months. When they were around 4-5 months old I went to just formula. It was a hard choice, and I definitely had some guilt and sadness. I think the odds are really against you when you have preemie twins though so I tell myself those four months of breast milk were better than nothing. It was certainly easier when I stopped trying unsuccessfully to get them to nurse. But we were having 0% success so it was really just frustration.

[longamkl]

BeachBum, I'll be anxious to hear how your cruise goes. We are going on a vacation at the end of November - I completely get wanting to reconnect with my husband. But I am worried about the flight (5 hours) and the condo where we will stay - babyproofing issues, sleep adjustment issues etc. It may not be much of a vacation at all. I'm picturing lots of time sitting on our balcony while the babies are sleeping too!

[TwinFoxes]

BeachBum, I'll be anxious to hear how your cruise goes. We are going on a vacation at the end of November - I completely get wanting to reconnect with my husband. But I am worried about the flight (5 hours) and the condo where we will stay - babyproofing issues, sleep adjustment issues etc. It may not be much of a vacation at all. I'm picturing lots of time sitting on our balcony while the babies are sleeping too!

We just came back from our first vacation with the girls. I don't know how old your little ones are, but for us it was a LOT of work. We had fun, but my dreams (hallucinations?) of it being a nice relaxing vay-cay were dashed. The biggest problem we had was trying to do things around the girls' nap schedule. They are morning nappers at home. So we'd wake up, do our regular routine (dress, breakfast, mom & dad get ready) and it would be naptime. We would put them in the car and they'd nap for 20 minutes or so, as we drove to whatever destination we had picked. That just wasn't enough for them. So in the afternoon when we were having lunch (in a restaurant), we'd have a meltdown. We couldn't really let them have their morning nap, or else we would have spent the entire day in the hotel room. One problem, which was poor planning on my part, was the hotel was a little far away from the attractions we wanted to go to. We should have picked one where we could walk back when the girls got tired in the afternoon, and we could have made lunch in the kitchen. Again, bad planning on my part.

They actually slept pretty well at night. And babyproofing wasn't a problem, we just kept an eye on them (much easier when there are two of us, rather than just me like at home since I'm a SAHM). And it really was fun. We were in Amish country, and the girls liked seeing the animals etc. It's fun to watch them see new things.

[longamkl]

Thanks BeachBum for reporting back. Mine will be about the same age when we go - 14 months. I don't have any grand plans about seeing attractions but I would like to make it to the beach (hopefully daily). We will be gone 12 days. We will be able to take most meals in our condo but it would be nice to eat out a couple of times. We are still at two naps a day here (and they are very necessary) but maybe by then we'll be at one nap a day.

I'm glad to hear that at the end of the day you had fun although it wasn't the relaxing vacation you had dreamed of.

[fivi2]

We went to Grand Cayman when the girls were right at 12 months. We were in a house on the beach, but we were with family. The beach where the house was wasn't great, so we did drive to another beach a couple times. We also went out to dinner once or twice.

We had a great time. We rented a crib so the girls napped there. (The house also had high chairs). We hung out at the house a lot though, other than going down to the other beach. We also had a lot of family there, so that helped! It was a very low key vacation - we didn't set our sights high!

[Melaine]

A couple days ago I overheard DD1 tell DD2, "It's fun to be different sometimes."

SO I am getting through to them!

[k_null81]

Hello ladies! I was hoping you wonderful ladies might be able to tell me what you think could be wrong with E or if it's completely normal. I'm a first time mom so bare with me please. :)

The boys are a little over 3 months old. K is a really laid back baby and usually if he is upset he truly has a reason to be. He typically isn't cranky to be cranky. Now E seems to be on the opposite end of the spectrum. Which is really trying for me. My husband is out of work so he is currently a stay at home dad until he finds employment. So according to my husband the boys typically do awesome all day long but around 4-5ish E starts getting cranky and nothing seems to calm him down unless you are holding him and even then he can be cranky. Which I am off work on the weekend so I can attest the boys are pretty happy babies during the day. I usually get home around 5:15 M-F. So basically from the time I get home till we go to bed we are dealing with a cranky little boy. Now it's not non-stop and sometime you can actually put him down but more often then not someone has to be consoleing him. He is on medicine for reflux but I assume his crankiness has nothing to do with it since he seems to be getting cranky during the same time of day.

Anyways, this has been going on for awhile now and I don't know what to make of it. I'm not sure if their is something wrong or if that is just E.

What do you ladies think? Do you think something is wrong or is he just a needy baby? Or colic?

[Melaine]

Sounds normal to me. Both of my girls were like that. They weren't very consolable, I often felt they would be crying and fussing the same whether I held them or not. I called it "colic" but they were pretty needy all the time and fussy. Definitely got worse in late afternoon/evening. I have heard that colic doesn't officially hit until 2-3 months so that may be what you are facing. I don't think it's something to be worried about, just worry about the stress of dealing with it. It is definitely hard.

[Naranjadia]

What do you ladies think? Do you think something is wrong or is he just a needy baby? Or colic?

That sounds a lot like my DD when she hit about 3 months. And I recall it lasting until 6 months or so, and then it miraculously faded away. I think that's the traditional timeframe for colic.

The nice thing is, two years later, it took me awhile to remember exactly which twin it was that had that issue. Aaaaah, amnesia!

[k_null81]

Thank you ladies! I had another question. Were your babies like that all night long? Because once we put E to bed for the night which is around 10ish we usually only have to check on him 2 or 3 times within 30 minutes of putting him down for the night trying to soothe him to sleep. Once he is finally asleep which is usually before 11. Both boys have been sleeping till 6-6:30 but this has only been going on for about 2 weeks so I don't want to get to excited yet. Especially since E woke up at 4 this morning. Prior to them sleeping till 6ish E would wake up to be fed around 4ish and of course since we are trying to keep them on a schedule we wake up K to feed him after E. I swear I think K would sleep forever if we let him ;)

So I guess my question is if it's colic would he be sleeping that good at night?

[Naranjadia]

So I guess my question is if it's colic would he be sleeping that good at night?

My DD slept like a little log as a baby. In my experience, how she was in the evening had no effect on her night sleep.

[Melaine]

When my girls were in the real stage I felt was colic, it would be hard to get them down for bed. They wouldn't settle till after 11 or so. And they weren't sleeping through the night really until about 1 so there was still a lot of night waking.

[Momof3Labs]

The witching hour. All of my kids have gotten fussy later in the day like that, though to varying degrees. E is more fussy now than M. We've solved it so far by putting them to bed early - the girls go down around 6 or 6:30pm (they are usually up twice at night to eat, and up for the day around 7am, sometimes 8am). The boys used to go down really early like that, too; now they go to bed at 7:15pm.

The other thing is that babies often tend to cluster feed in those hours getting ready for the long night. Tonight, M took two 4oz EBM bottles in less than an hour, and then wanted more an hour later. Not sure how much she took that time as I had sat down to pump (and still am). So even if you think that he shouldn't be hungry, he might be looking for more to eat (and sometimes we have to coerce the girls to take more but judging from the amount they then take, it was what they wanted).

You may have tried all this already, just wanted to mention what has helped reduce the evening fussies in our house for our kids!

[twowhat?]

Argh I could never go back to those days. Both of our girls, starting around 2 or 3 months, would start to scream at 6pm and it wouldn't end until 9:30 or 10pm. And there was nothing we could do. They'd scream even when we held them, rocked them, you name it. And we were not willing to throw them in the car and drive around the block, we were soooo exhausted. So we did what exhausted parents do. I took one baby into one dark room and held her while she screamed, and my husband took the other into another dark room and held her as she screamed. And they would scream until they fell asleep. It lasted until about 4 months I think. What really seemed to help the most was putting them to bed ridiculously early - like 6pm. We just started the bedtime routing at 5:30, and had them in pajamas and nursed by 6pm, and then put them in their bassinets and let them cry. I think I read somewhere that one of the theories behind colic is overstimulation - babies just get too much of it so that by the end of the day, they are cranky and screaming. And sometimes it helps the most by just letting the baby cry himself to sleep since nothing else works.

I feel for you...those times were absolute misery for everyone.