Sleep training - an insight into our madness

For those of you who have been involved in the twins' lives, you know that they are sleep trained.  What that basically means is that we created a sleep schedule for them since birth and trained them to follow it.  The method that Jason and I used was a combination of three book techniques...Baby Wise, Baby Whisperer, and Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child.

There are many debates as to whether sleep training your child or just letting them sleep when they want to is the better method.  There is no right or wrong answer, and most of it depends on your parenting style.  Parent directed sleeping was the best method for us, because, well we have two and chaos easily ensues, but also, Jason and I are type A personalities and need an order to the universe.

Our method worked well, Zane was sleeping through the night (11 to 12 hours of continuous sleep) at 12 weeks old and Lily at 13 weeks old, age adjusted that would be 9 & 10 weeks.  They started with 4 naps at birth, moved to 3 at 6 months, moved to 2 at 9 months and will remain with two until 18 months.

There are battles along the way, and sleep training is not fun some days, but it helps keep us tuned into what's going on with them and predict behavior.  Currently, Zane is taking 2 very short naps during the day and does not seem satisfied with such little sleep.  He's still sleeping 12 hours at night, but his day sleep is out of hand.  I'm currently going to adjust his diet to provide him with more potassium and magnesium and see if that helps.  He seems to come out of REM sleep screaming and I think it's because he is moving around too much during his dreams.  Hopefully the increase in potassium and magnesium will calm his muscles during sleep and things will get back on track.

Here's a template that records sleep behaviors, if you're interested:

Sleep Log

Publish at Scribd or explore others: tips natural