Question about One Up Both Up

[lupineaura]

Most people advise that when one baby wakes at night, you wake the other to stay on the same schedule. My concern is that it's always the same twin that wakes first. So, we are constantly waking the other one. Maybe it's sleep deprivation talking, but I'm worried we are "ruining" the good sleeping habits of the one we are constantly waking. Are we training her not to sleep? Twins are 5 weeks.

[ashb62]

Any time I felt like one twin may be ready to sleep through a feeding, we would just try it one night. If the second baby was up soon after the first baby, we would go back to one up, both up for a few weeks. Up until my boys were around 6 or 7 months old, the other baby was pretty much always up within an hour of the first baby waking.

[kbrooke06]

I don't have outside babies yet, but with my twin sisters we did one up both up.

We noticed the same one was waking first, so we were either waking the second or she would wake from her sister crying if we didn't get there quick enough. It was never her waking on her own.

We decided to try not waking her for a couple nights, she did great and slept through! We put them in separate rooms until the other one was sleeping through the night as well.

Obviously all babies are different, but that's what happened with them. One was ready to STTN but the other wasnt.

I'm hoping my babies are good sleepers when they come! Good luck!

[anotherdreamer]

Around 2-3m I felt my DD2 could skip the feeding so we stopped waking her. She STTN and DD1 was hit or miss. I think you can try it one night as mentioned and see how it goes. Sometimes I still got them both up if DD2 was stirring a bit anyway.

[anakah]

We did one up both up. In the beginning, DD was a super sleepy baby and I feel like she would have just keep sleeping if we didn't wake her to feed whenever her brother woke up. They were tiny babies so I wasn't comfortable letting her sleep through a feed if we fed her brother. I do sometimes wonder if we ruined her good sleeping habits by waking her all the time, since they didn't sleep through the night until well after a year...

I will second pp's though and try it out for a night. If she doesnt' wake up then let her sleep.

[aydee]

One up both up never worked for us. It sounded good in theory and I know that a lot of twin moms swear by it, but I had 2 babies with very different sleep habits. If I had constantly woken the other, neither one of them would have ever been getting quality sleep.

At 5 weeks old, I don't know that you can "ruin" a baby's sleep habits, but you can certainly end up with an overtired grumpy baby. What worked for us was a "divide and conquer" routine for nighttime. DS was nursing, so he was always my responsibility when he woke at night. DD would never latch and was therefore bottle fed, so DH always got up with her when she woke. It worked for us, though DH got the better end of the deal b/c DD was a far better sleeper than DS! Fortunately we had a lot of success with sleep training around 5 months and started getting longer stretches of sleep out of each of them.

[carrotcake]

Jun 17, 2015 7:20:16 GMT -5 ashb62 said:

Any time I felt like one twin may be ready to sleep through a feeding, we would just try it one night. If the second baby was up soon after the first baby, we would go back to one up, both up for a few weeks. Up until my boys were around 6 or 7 months old, the other baby was pretty much always up within an hour of the first baby waking.

Same here. Their sleep habits go through a lot of changes in the first 6-9mo. It was prob around 6-7mo that I stopped waking the better sleeper. He was always the better sleeper, though. He STTN almost right away when I stopped waking him too. The other twin was around 11mo. My oldest didn't STTN until 3yo, so it was glorious and OUBU def didn't ruin anything.

Give it a shot. The other will likely wake soon after but maybe you'll get lucky for a night or two. At 5w, there's really no logic or reason to why babies do things.

[4legsrbest]

For us, it was the same. W always woke up first, so I was waking M to eat each time. I only did this at night and only until they were 3 months old. I let M sleep in first thing in the am and sometimes let him sleep through his nap a little more too - he just needed more sleep than his brother but never seemed bothered to be woken up to eat. He started STTN at 3 months old so I never woke him again - we just let him go one night and he did, but at 5 weeks if I didn't wake them both up, I'd hedge to bet I'd have been right back up with M shortly after I went back to bed.

If you are bfing, I'd still get them both up at the same time. If not and your DH can take a shift feeding, you can try to get up with wakey and then let him handle sleepy when she wakes up, or vice versa. Never know until you try but 5 weeks is awful young to STTN. Not that it's never happened, just not the norm. The goal is to help them sleep well and attend to their needs in the nigh, but you also have to get good quality rest, balancing those two is a challenge.

[rayray007]

Jun 17, 2015 7:20:16 GMT -5 ashb62 said:

Any time I felt like one twin may be ready to sleep through a feeding, we would just try it one night. If the second baby was up soon after the first baby, we would go back to one up, both up for a few weeks. Up until my boys were around 6 or 7 months old, the other baby was pretty much always up within an hour of the first baby waking.

I agree with this. If you think the second one might sleep through to the next feeding, give it a try. May work, may not. There were times when I was so exhausted I just wanted to crawl back into bed so bad after feeding the first that I didn't care if the other was up in an hour. Didn't do that too many times, the second one was usually up soon after the first. They are down to one 4am feed and I still wake them both (I think it might be habit now because the second one is usually awake and just waiting). But try it and see what works for you.

[babys2015]

Jun 17, 2015 21:10:49 GMT -5 aydee said:

One up both up never worked for us. It sounded good in theory and I know that a lot of twin moms swear by it, but I had 2 babies with very different sleep habits. If I had constantly woken the other, neither one of them would have ever been getting quality sleep.

At 5 weeks old, I don't know that you can "ruin" a baby's sleep habits, but you can certainly end up with an overtired grumpy baby. What worked for us was a "divide and conquer" routine for nighttime. DS was nursing, so he was always my responsibility when he woke at night. DD would never latch and was therefore bottle fed, so DH always got up with her when she woke. It worked for us, though DH got the better end of the deal b/c DD was a far better sleeper than DS! Fortunately we had a lot of success with sleep training around 5 months and started getting longer stretches of sleep out of each of them.

This is what we do as well. DH feeds one baby expressed breast milk..

[macchiatto]

We did one up both up but if the same baby is consistently still asleep when the other wakes up, I'd let them go for a few nights and see how long they'll sleep.

[wamom]

We never woke up a baby. Right now at 3 mo old baby girl is still up almost exactly the same time at 3am and has been up at that time for over 2mo now. Baby boy has transitioned from 2 wake ups to sttn just this week. They are just different people with slightly different schedules.

[mrsf0831]

We do one up both but our boys rotate who wakes up and its usually around 4/430 last night they slept till 5 am wohoo lol they are 2 mos old but also had their shots yesterday

[linegirl313]

Hi, May 15 mama!

This was the case with my twins, too. DS would wake up first (he was also smaller and fussier), so I would wake DD. Two years later, DD LOVES to sleep and sleeps through the night beautifully. DS is usually up earlier but patient enough to wait for his sister to wake up. In my case, it was absolutely fine. Good luck. I remember the survival stage.