I am desperately trying to figure out how to get the boys to sleep better at night. Thank you in advance for reading all of this and giving me your two cents.
The Situation: We feed the babies around 6 PM, put them down usually by 7 and then the night-long torture starts. Eddie and Charlie alternate waking up every few hours crying very hard. It usually starts around 10 PM. Then there is the inevitable midnight freak out. Eddie will often cry from 12 until I finally give in and feed him around 1. (More on that later.) Then they will sleep well for a few hours, but will wake up and cry around 3 or 4 or 5 and I'll put off feeding them until 6.
The Background: Ever since they were newborns, I have "shooshed" them back to sleep when they awoke. It was just easier to pat their backs, give them their binkies, and soothe them back to sleep. I think I never let them learn how to soothe themselves. Before Christmas, they were both sleeping (with shooshing) until around 2 AM, when we'd feed them, and then they'd sleep until around 7 AM. All that was ruined, I assume, by traveling and then their subsequent illness.
The Goal: To have them sleep soundly until their night feeding no sooner than 1 AM. (When they eat earlier than that, they inevitably want to eat again before 6 AM.) I'm trying to help this by also getting them on a regular nap schedule (morning nap around 9 AM, midday nap around 12 or 1, and late afternoon nap around 4 or 5.)
The Strategy: We've been trying to let them cry it out. We only give them their binkies, instead of the elaborate measures we used to take to soothe them back to sleep. We've been doing this for a week now and there hasn't been any progress. The boys still wake up a ton at night and, like I said, it's always around the same times. The night feeding is the worst b/c even though I haven't "reinforced" a midnight or earlier feeding, they still wake up screaming bloody murder every night at 12 and will cry inconsolably from a half hour to an hour until I finally give in. To complicate all this, Eddie can now flip himself over onto his back and break out of his swaddle, and Charlie may be teething. Oh, and they all have colds again. But they've been waking many times a night from the get-go, so I refuse to believe it will get better "when..."
So what on earth do I do? Do I resign myself to going back to two night feedings? Do I go back to feeding them at 10 before I go to bed? Do I keep letting them cry their brains out? For another week? Two? Is this just reflux acting up? Should I try switching formula?
I'm ready to kill someone for more than two hours of sleep together. Thanks for your help.
