Twins and Sleep

The twins have not been the greatest sleepers, individually or as a team.  I say "as a team" because one big challenge for us the first six months with the twins was not just getting them to sleep well, but to sleep at the same time.  Fast forward to somewhere between 10 and 11 months old, however, and they were finally both consistently sleeping through the night!  (Napping during the day has been just as challenging and honestly the challenge is not over, but I'll save that for another blog). 

Catarina was also very challenging the first few months of her life.  She cried a lot. A LOT.  Sometimes for hours at a time.  It was very frustrating for both Chris and I, and there were lots of tears on my part.  The first months with the twins were challenging enough with the poor sleeping habits and the fact that there were two babies.  Catarina's crying on top of all that was a lot to handle.  

The stress and anxiety of all that was going on those first few months left me in survival mode and robbed me of a lot of the sweet bonding moments I had with baby Katy just enjoying her as a baby. This of course also caused anxiety and guilt on top of the anxiety and guilt everything else was causing. 

Last night, after a couple months of consistently sleeping through the night, Catarina woke up crying at midnight.  I went into the baby room, picked her up, and sat down to rock her.  She instantly calmed down and fell asleep on my chest.  It was so lovely that I didn't want to put her back to bed.  I wanted to sit there and just enjoy her sleeping on my chest to make up for all the sweet sleeping moments we lost when she was tiny, she was crying all the time, and we were all so stressed out.  So I didn't put her back to bed.  For half an hour I sat there holding her, listening to her breathe, and running my hands over her soft head as I though about how far we have come since those first stressful months together. 

Unfortunately, my presence in the baby room awakened Cami.  Poor Cami is going though some kind of sleep regression right now where she fights her sleep. So for the next hour and a half, I was up and down trying to get Cami back to sleep.  But at least Catarina and I squeezed in a therapeutic bonding session first.  This is just life with twins, or at least my life with twins who have had (and continue to have) a very hard time learning to sleep well.