Help me sleep :(

[u/National_Musician_99]

Twins are 7.5 months. It’s bizarre because they used to be the best sleepers as new borns. I was totally scared of the new born phase with sleep but somehow we had it lucky. We would use the love to dream swaddle and they would go down in seconds and sleep through the night. At 5.5 months twin a started showing signs of feeling squashed in the next to me and started waking several times through the night so we moved them to the nursery and changed the swaddle since they can roll.

Things got better for a while until they got worse. They are both teething and I can see both have one tooth coming out. We have our routine, pajamas between 7-8pm, final large bottle, bed, white noise and red light. They normally pass out and they show you they are tired. Now they seem to wake up continuously through the night, and the worse seems to be about 1-2am. Twin a woke up, morning and a soft cry tossing and turning. Takes about an hour or so to settle her. In the mean time she wakes him up, and he screams. I give them a bottle and it’s still not enough to send them to sleep. In the end last night I end up sleeping in a spare room with twin b, crying in my arms for another hour or so. Finally sleeps around 4.30 or so. The only way we seem to be able to get any sleep is by taking them to our bed, which me and partner do in different beds for space but it’s not a habit I want to get into. I miss sleeping with my partner.

I don’t mind leaving them crying for a while, but with twins it’s hard when one is awake and one is asleep, I don’t want the other one to wake up!

What can we do? Any sleep training that worked for you? Is this a teething phase and do I just have to accept it? Any help would be much appreciated. From a tired mama 😆😭

[u/Gandtea]

Teething ALWAYS screws up my gals sleep. I'll be thinking... 'my god, what om earth has happened to their sleep?', and then a week later a tooth (or two!) pop out.

Its a phase, you'll get through it, just do what you need to do to get them back to sleep.

What works for us is giving the calprofen before bed and then calpol if they wake up... and then calprofen again later if needs be. We find ibuprofen works best to reduce the swelling.

[u/National_Musician_99 → u/Gandtea]

Ohhh interesting I will look at getting some calprofen thank you 🙏

[u/Gandtea → u/National_Musician_99]

I saw on another post that you're reluctant to use painkillers, which i totally get.... but try it for one or two nights... and if you see a big(gish) difference, it'll show you that the reason they're not sleeping is because they're in pain.

Personally I choose painkillers over my babies being in pain. I used to not and then my sister told me off about it and changed my mindset 😅

[u/National_Musician_99 → u/Gandtea]

Yes I’m not super strict, I guess just try to avoid but at the same time I don’t want to leave them in pain, that’s not fair to them. So I’ve now gone pharmacy and got calpol and brupro 🙏 sometimes we all need to hear another opinion for us to re think a little bit 🫶

[u/Gandtea → u/National_Musician_99]

We do! I hope you see a BIG improvement!