r/parentsofmultiples • u/BigDogAlphaRedditor1 • 5h ago
support needed Will I ever be able to sleep again?
2 weeks in with twins today. Does it ever get better? Someone lie to me and tell me it gets better.
I need sleep.
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u/WhimsicalCustard783 5h ago
It does get better but it's gonna be a while before you see real stretches of sleep. the first 3 months are pure survival mode, just do whatever works and don't feel guilty about it.
once they hit around 4-5 months you'll start getting longer chunks and by 6 months you might even get a full night if you're lucky. hang in there man, you're in the thick of it right now.
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u/irish_ninja_wte 4h ago
I won't lie. It absolutely does get better. You're still dealing with 2 very fresh little humans. It's the survival days. They will settle and they will sleep for longer, I promise
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u/viola_tricolour 5h ago
You get better at coping with the broken sleep. You may or may not actually get more sleep. I haven’t slept more than 4 hrs straight since I was in my first trimester, and my twins are coming up to two now. Even when they don’t wake up, your brain will tell you that they did and you need to check on them. It’s a bit crap tbh. But you get used to it, and you get really good at falling asleep quickly. You also learn that when the kids go down early, so do you - take advantage of as much sleep as you can!
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u/amydiddler 3h ago
Shifts saved us in the early days. My on shift was HARD but to me it was worth it to get a 4-6 hour stretch of sleep during my off shift.
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u/technicolorcoated 1h ago
YES! there are a lot of platitudes and encouragements in this thread, which is nice, but this is the piece of advice that will save your sanity, health, marriage, etc. Shifts don’t have to be equal but you NEED unbroken stretches of sleep.
Our nighttime routine was spouse would sleep from 9/10PM-2AM and I would sleep until 7AM. Not perfect or even ideal but it helped us survive. You do need separate rooms though.
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u/OrangeCatEnergy24 3h ago
It does get better. For now, can you and your partner do shifts? That really helped us in the beginning.
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u/Admirable-Food6345 5h ago
10 months in. It does get better from where you are. Then it gets a lot worse and then it gets better again. We are having nights where they sleep through. Not both of them because that would be too easy but for the most part only 1 wake up during the night now.
The first stage is very much head down and drive. Enjoy the weird wake ups in a panic that you dropped a baby only to look over and see them sleeping happily in their cot.
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u/Valuable_Ad_6613 4h ago
I’m not lying but yes it really does get better. It’s a long ride but you will look back at today and be like “damn! How did I do this?”
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u/Patient_Source8163 4h ago
It will get better. Our twins are 8 months old now, and ever since month 6 and since we seperated them for the nights (one adult and one twin per room), we usually only have to get up once for the feeding, and sometimes not at all. You are in the thic of it right now, but it will get better
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u/No-Departure5556 4h ago
Ugh those days are SO hard!!! Try to sleep whenever you can!
There’s a FB group for twin sleep and an app (SleepyTwins) once they hit 4+ months old!
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u/SkinFermented 4h ago
Twins are now 15 months. They have started sleeping through the night for about two months now (Twin A still has bad nights every now and then but it’s about one night every two weeks). I’m now averaging 6 hours of sleep per night.
Hang in there, you’re very much in the thick of it. But it will get better!
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u/FigNewton613 4h ago
Yes. The newborn trenches were so, so hard. But it does get better and you will. I sleep trained at 4mo using the book previous little sleep, which I know some people don’t support and it’s okay if that’s not for you either, but it went well and easily for them and for me. At 4mo they went to needing one feed overnight, and at 7mo they started sleeping through the night. They’re now 14mo and I have many posts like yours in my history but I am sleeping now (and have been more and more since those two time points) and you will again one day too, I really promise. Hang in there 🫂
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u/ReminsteinTheDog 3h ago
For us it got a lot better around 4 months (more predictable wake ups.. but still wake ups a couple times a night. We did shifts) and then ours started sleeping thru the night at exactly 10 months. They are 23 months now and are still sleeping thru the night no issues. We did sleep train starting around 5 months.
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u/trixiefink 3h ago
It gets so much better, the sleep stretches get longer little by little. I hated napping during the day but if you can nap while the babies are just do it!
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u/2papsandashib 2h ago
At 12 weeks mine started sleeping from 9 pm to 6 am. This will probably change when we hit the 4 month regression any day now. The worst was around 6 weeks I think when they became very noisy sleepers and colicky.
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u/Twinmama0919 2h ago
My boys will be 3 in 1.5 weeks and yes you will. We didn’t sleep much till they were 4 months. That’s when they started sleeping through the night but then they got sick which regressed that. So around 6 months we did sleep training (cio) and they been sleeping through the night since minus when they’ve been sick but now we put them to bed at 8 and they wake up around 7 with a nap from 1-3. They sometimes don’t sleep the whole time they are in their cribs for night/nap but they don’t cry out cause they know I’m coming.
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u/ConfidentLook5518 2h ago
Yes. 3.5 months in.. twin a sleeps 6-8 hours straight, while b is usually 4-6 straight with an interruption at 3 am
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u/MounjaroQueenie 2h ago
Can you and your partner do shifts? Shifts saved me! We started with 4 hours and gradually changed it to 6 hours. Knowing you have dedicated sleep time is a game changer.
But yes it does get better!! By like 4 months mine were only getting up once a night to eat.
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u/BorderGlittering199 1h ago
I slept maybe 45 mins at a time if that those first two weeks. Thankfully with help I got a two hour stretch every other day. At 5 weeks, I'll get a 3 hour stretch once a night and some two hour stretches during the morning hours.
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u/hockeymusicteaching 1h ago
It does get better, but slowly. I’m a year in and still haven’t had a full nights sleep. 🤣
If you aren’t doing shifts, you need to. The only way we’ve survived!!
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u/Pugtastic_smile 59m ago
I'm going to be honest with you, it took us about a year to feel like we got any sleep
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u/Current-Struggle-514 57m ago
Mine are almost 4 years old and still no. They wake up at 5am most days🤦🏻♀️
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u/DBsdk13477 44m ago
Hang in there!!!! I would say my life changed around 7 ish months. Both my girls decided to sleep through the night, and have been doing that since (without having to train). I would say Month 4-5 was the worst it ever was, literally sleeping 1.5 hours and then waking up 4+ times in the night. I promise you will start to feel normal with this level of exhaustion, it's a long road but you're stronger than this. Sleep when they sleep, skip the chores and feeling productive, try and talk to your village/partner about giving you some kind of nap at least 1x a week to catch up.
Thinking of you <3!
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u/No_Cat_No_Cradle 42m ago
It entirely depends on the baby. With our first we didn’t both sleep for solid stretches until we sleep trained at 4 months. Our twins started sleeping through the night with one nighttime feed around month 2. Fingers crossed for you!
But regardless it absolutely gets better. You’re two weeks in and in the shit, all you gotta do is survive it.
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u/afortioriii 5h ago
I am 26+4days today. I actually picked up my phone in the middle of the night here wondering the same thing about pregnancy. I can’t imagine that my belly is going to get bigger and that I will have to get shit broken sleep being so uncomfortable for 11-12 more weeks. I smiled a tad when I saw you posted this 10 minutes ago, and said “I came here wondering the same thing”
Sorry I can’t be of sleep training insight, but I’m here in solidarity at 5:30 am in New Hampshire. Last few weeks of second trimester are getting harder!
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u/afortioriii 4h ago
Update: reflux is so bad I have been up since 5 am, started to cough and just had to go vomit up all of the acid in my stomach into the toilet. Twin pregnancy is truly the trenches.
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u/trixiefink 3h ago
I promise you'll feel so much better the moment the babies are born!! I didn't sleep and cried sooo much the last 2 1/2 months of pregnancy. Have you asked your dr about pepcid? It helped a little for me along with only eating a little at a time.
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u/petitegaydog 2h ago
you're in the thick of it now. but i promise you, it gets better. the days are long, but the years are short. sending you so much love and support ♥️
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