Two weekends ago, this was the question I was asking myself when considering how to get my babies to sleep.
Yes, I was sleep deprived. Yes, I was agitated. Yes, I was somewhat out of my mind.
Instead, a great friend of mine was very luckily at my house and hauled me to the book store before drugging my babies... or getting them drunk.
Like many couples in the world, my husband and I were not on the same page. He didn't like to hear our babies cry. I didn't like it when our whole house suffered from sleep deprivation. I could understand both sides of the issue.
At the book store, I decided to browse before buying. Always a good tip when you're looking for a manual about babies. You want to find something that makes you comfortable but that you think your spouse can handle as well.
As parents of twins who share a room, our primary concern was one waking the other up while crying. So I knew I needed to find a book that would address this. I also knew I needed to find a book that didn't insist I coddle them. We'd been taking that route for months, and it wasn't working.
After perusing the selections at the first book store and finding NOTHING (you'd think they'd have books about twins out there... you'd be wrong) we asked the sales lady for help. She found ONE copy of a book titled "Happy Sleep Habits, Happy Twins". The book was at another location. She called over and had it held for us and we raced over to La Cantera.
Now, I must have been desperate because I HATE La Cantera. I hate shopping in general. But I braved the crowds and the bad parking and the entitled rich people using valet parking and hauled my exhausted butt in to find out how to get my babies to sleep.
The book was perfect! Perfect! It broke down sleep techniques into steps and even by age. So I was able to skip ahead to my babies' age to find out what to do if I needed them to sleep now. Like, immediately.
The solution was frustratingly simple: twins don't wake each other up when they cry. Seriously? We'd been racing into their room to pick them up at all hours of the night and it didn't even matter?
Turns out, folks, that this Marc Weissbluth, M.D. character is a freaking genius. Within three nights, we had my twin sons going down to bed at 6:30 p.m. with very little fussing and sleeping for 12 solid hours. My husband and I slept soundly all night in the same bed. It was like Heaven. We woke up refreshed and ready to face the day. We remembered we actually liked each other. And, remarkably, our boys' behavior improved a million times over. They were happy and laughing in the morning before day care instead of crying and fussy.
I don't want to make it seem like all of this happened without any bumps in the road. While the hubs helped me feed them a bottle and put them down, I had to be the one to monitor the crying. He just couldn't handle it. So he played games with M, our 8-year-old, while I monitored baby crying.
The first night, they cried for 37 minutes. It was a torturous 37 minutes. But it wasn't screaming. It was just crying. So I felt okay following this guy's advice. After all, he's both a pediatrician and a father of twins.
So I waited. And played Facebook games. And took Xanax. And then they fell asleep. One twin woke up and cried for five minutes in the night and then went right back to sleep. The other never woke.
The second night, they cried for eight minutes. Yes, you read correctly. Eight minutes! What an improvement! They slept all night and no one woke up.
The third night, they cried for four minutes.
The fourth night, I went to the kitchen to fix some water, and by the time I came back, they weren't crying anymore. Had to be less than a minute.
They've gone down with no trouble ever since. We are all sleeping, which is amazing. My husband's and my relationship has gotten stronger. We have more time and energy to play with our older son and the babies are happier than they've ever been.
Thank you, Dr. Weissbluth. If I win the lottery, you'll be set for life.
