Sleep Training! Ha...Jokes.
I get it. You read the title and you think Sleep Training is a non-beneficial burden. In reality, it's a very necessary thing (at least for my family) but you just have to know what to expect. Once you set realistic expectations then you don't mind the occasional 4 am stints which lead to writing a blog post about sleep training [*hint *hint].
First and foremost, I will talk about how we were successful at sleep training.
I. Buy In.
My wife is a "delicate flower" in the sense that she is very connected to her children and wants zero harm to come to them. So, of course, the idea of her kids "crying themselves to sleep" is not at all appealing to her. But do you know what's super valuable to her [and me]? The ability to function on a day-to-day basis because she has gotten enough sleep. Once my wife was too exhausted to protest, it was like taking candy from a baby to get her to agree to the plan. ['See what I did there, with the baby similie].
II. Plan
There are multiple ways to sleep train. The going trend is that the less harsh the method, the more time it takes to do train. If you have twins then you need to double (if not triple) the time it takes. We were sort of forced to go with the harshest of sleep training methods because of space and the fact that we have twins and the lack of a third bedroom. What this means is that not only were the boys individually going to have to self-sooth but they would need to do it while the other one was crying his head off. You can imagine that each fed off of the other and multiplied the time for the self-soothing process to run its course.
III. Equipment
We live on the first floor, in Harlem, NY. For those of you that don't know what this means; we need to get used to hearing noises (cars, sirens, voices, neighbors, etc.) when we are trying to catch some "Z's." For babies, this doesn't work. Lights and random sounds wake them up and keep them up. So you need to set the room up to isolate them from all of that.
Our set-up was:
- two sound machines: this helps to block out sounds. We got two so that each baby had one which helped to block out the noise made from the other baby;
- black out curtains: blocks out street light, duh. get some real light-cancelling curtains that can make the room feel like night even if it's 6:30 pm in the middle of summer;
- video baby monitor: to see if your kid actually needs you or just crying because (s)he is being a jerk;
- noise-canceling headphones: so when you are telling yourself that you are the worst parent on the planet, at least you can listen to the sweet, sweet sounds of Maxwell's Sumthin' Sumthin';
- "Cojones": there will be long nights of crying... like hours. Even if you did go in and comfort after a while, you still need to let it happen.
IV. Routine
This goes hand-in-hand with the "plan" but deserves individual mention. Where the "plan" talks about what sleep training method to adopt, the "routine" talks of what you do that leads up to their being put down. For us it was it was simple but then evolved over time.
First routine (5 months):
- Got home at 5:30 ish
- Bath time started at 5:55 pm
- Bottle at 6:25 pm
- Story at 6:35 pm
- Bedtime at 6:45 pm
- We didn't come back into the room until 6 am the next morning.
This routine evolved, going through many different iterations to what we have today.
Current routine (11.5 months):
- Get home at around 6:15 ish
- Play for a moment, practice walking, and other skills.
- Bath time starts between 6:30 and 6:45 pm
- Hefty Bottle at 7:15 pm
- Cuddles 7:25 pm
- Bedtime at 7:35 pm
- With this routine, we also don't come back into the room until 6 am, ideally.
********* I didn't talk much about this but it is crucial to sleep training: NAPS! Please, please, please know that the routine doesn't start at bedtime. In reality it starts when they wake up. The number and length of naps that occur during the day are crucial to your kid sleeping through the night.
Great, now you know how I sleep trained my twins. Next up: how to set your expectations throughout this process so that you don't lose your mind. Check that article out here.