Dropping Second-Breakfast
If I don’t like their schedule, just wait a day. Two days ago, on the night after I post the twins’ overnight schedule, talking about how they wake up every night at 2am and about 3am for pacifiers and milk respectively, they change their routine. They slept until just past 4am without making a peep. I thought it was a fluke, that I’d see some movie about gay cowboys win an Oscar before I’d see them sleep like that again, but it happened again last night. I’m curious to see if they do it again tonight.
This coincides with a lengthening of their time between feedings during the day. They’ve been on a three-hour routine since birth, not counting those couple days where I experimented with a two-and-a-half hour routine to see what would happen, and discovered that bad things would happen. My goal is a four-hour routine where I feed, keep them awake for two-and-a-half hours, and let them nap for 90 minutes. Their three-hour routine involved feeding, keeping them awake for 90 minutes, letting them nap for 60 minutes, and inserting their pacifiers repeatedly over the final 30 minutes while hoping they go back to sleep.
I lengthen the time between feedings gradually, adding a couple minutes to each feeding break each day. For example, they used to eat afternoon meals at 1:00 and 4:00; today they ate at 12:44 and 3:52, and tomorrow they’ll eat at 12:40 and 3:50, with a goal of 11am and 3pm feedings by the end of the month. I’ll keep moving those feedings earlier with a numerical retentiveness rarely seen outside of the IRS, until their little minds are so confused that they’re willing to eat and sleep whenever I tell them to without complaint. That’s when I know I’ve broken them and I’ve won.
I’m trying to eliminate the first post-breakfast feeding of the day, formerly at 10am. That one has always had the roughest nap, the one where they’re awake from 9-10am no matter when I set them down. I’m waking them up earlier and feeding them less at this feeding every day until it disappears like comprehensibility from the script for “Syriana.” So far it’s going well, or at least I get to feed them before they have a chance to complain about being forced to nap in the middle of the morning.
I decided it was time to drop a feeding when I saw a chart saying that around three months of age, babies should be taking three naps a day instead of the four they were taking, or at least the four I was setting them down for. I knew they weren’t napping well most of the day, and I hoped that by reducing their overall number of naps and naptime that they’d accept their offered naps more readily. This may be a case of trying to read too much into a meager intellect, like that Anna Nicole Smith Supreme Court case, but they seem to be responding. We’re only a few days into the transition, but they’re napping better already. Plus they’ve slept close to six hours overnight for the past two days, and if spreading out their daytime feedings also spreads out their nighttime feedings, I’m all for it. I just have to remember to set a timer if I’m cooking meatloaf overnight instead of relying on them to wake me.
This coincides with a lengthening of their time between feedings during the day. They’ve been on a three-hour routine since birth, not counting those couple days where I experimented with a two-and-a-half hour routine to see what would happen, and discovered that bad things would happen. My goal is a four-hour routine where I feed, keep them awake for two-and-a-half hours, and let them nap for 90 minutes. Their three-hour routine involved feeding, keeping them awake for 90 minutes, letting them nap for 60 minutes, and inserting their pacifiers repeatedly over the final 30 minutes while hoping they go back to sleep.
I lengthen the time between feedings gradually, adding a couple minutes to each feeding break each day. For example, they used to eat afternoon meals at 1:00 and 4:00; today they ate at 12:44 and 3:52, and tomorrow they’ll eat at 12:40 and 3:50, with a goal of 11am and 3pm feedings by the end of the month. I’ll keep moving those feedings earlier with a numerical retentiveness rarely seen outside of the IRS, until their little minds are so confused that they’re willing to eat and sleep whenever I tell them to without complaint. That’s when I know I’ve broken them and I’ve won.
I’m trying to eliminate the first post-breakfast feeding of the day, formerly at 10am. That one has always had the roughest nap, the one where they’re awake from 9-10am no matter when I set them down. I’m waking them up earlier and feeding them less at this feeding every day until it disappears like comprehensibility from the script for “Syriana.” So far it’s going well, or at least I get to feed them before they have a chance to complain about being forced to nap in the middle of the morning.
I decided it was time to drop a feeding when I saw a chart saying that around three months of age, babies should be taking three naps a day instead of the four they were taking, or at least the four I was setting them down for. I knew they weren’t napping well most of the day, and I hoped that by reducing their overall number of naps and naptime that they’d accept their offered naps more readily. This may be a case of trying to read too much into a meager intellect, like that Anna Nicole Smith Supreme Court case, but they seem to be responding. We’re only a few days into the transition, but they’re napping better already. Plus they’ve slept close to six hours overnight for the past two days, and if spreading out their daytime feedings also spreads out their nighttime feedings, I’m all for it. I just have to remember to set a timer if I’m cooking meatloaf overnight instead of relying on them to wake me.
posted by Matt at
11:10 PM
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