I like sleep and I'm not getting any. I figure it's been since about May since I've slept more that 5 hours at a time. The longest stretch the girls have slept has been about 6 hours and my body is really starting to rebel. Lately, I've been getting up at midnight, 3 and 6 with the babies. I'm exhausted every day, I'm gaining weight, I have no energy, and I feel like a slug. I've also had an underlining case of the grumps the past 6 1/2 months that I release on Josh, so I'm sure he'd appreciate me getting a good night's sleep as well. Luckily, we've concurred the swaddling dilemma. We now 'swaddle' with their arms out and they are usually able to sooth themselves to sleep. Sometimes, it doesn't even take a binky. However, come midnight(ish) they scream and scream and scream. I usually feed them in hopes that they'll sleep the rest of the night, but then at 3, they're up again. Here's my issue though- do I feed them every time they wake up? That seems silly, so I've just giving them binkies and let them go back to sleep, but then 3 hours later they're up again. Sometimes I will feed them at 3, hoping they'll sleep until 9, but that hasn't worked either. As soon as 6 o'clock rolls around, they're up, hungry and ready to go. I need to figure out a way to get them to eat more during the day, so they wont need or want food at night. We're up to about 5-6 oz at each feeding and most of the time it's impossible to get them to eat more than that (why did they have to take after me for their eating habits? WHY?).
I'm also not one of those women who are completely against letting them cry it out. My only hesitation to go that route is the fact that we have two in an apartment. I'm afraid Josh will find a bomb by our front door in the morning in retaliation for the screaming babies. Have I mentioned how loud they are? We always get comments on how loud the girls are. Again, they got that unfortunate trait from their mother... I've had Sophie sleep in the living room a few nights, and that really helped Lillian sleep better, but I want Sophie to get used to sleeping in her own crib (yes, we now have 2 cribs and it FREAKS me out. Seriously, who puts a single baby in a giant crib? It's so weird to me) and I'm afraid if she gets used to sleeping in her bouncy seat in the living room that we'll have to start the whole process over again when we move her back into the crib. Should we move her crib into the living room? I'm seriously considering it.
I know this is the standard complaint of every new mother, but the reality is that I don't think I can function much longer like this. Taking care of 2 babies by myself all day while being a walking zombie is exhausting. Taking naps isn't really an option because I take forever to fall asleep during the day, there's SO much to do (that still hardly ever gets done) and I ALWAYS wake up from naps more groggy. I need some good old fashioned REM cycles in the middle of the night.
So help. What should I do? What amazing tricks do you mothers have to get your kids to sleep. I know there are some of you out there, because I read your blogs. :) I'm thinking I need to get them to eat more during the day and establish a set bed time with a pretty firm routine. We go through periods of having a good nightly routine, but most of the time we're just trying to survive (that sounds a little dramatic) and keep them both happy while still taking care of ourselves.
All I know is this mama needs sleep.
Aren't they adorable? I know I've had this picture on my blog before, but it's one of my favorites and I haven't uploaded any new pictures in several days, so this is what I've got.
