Sleep training - night 1

OMG, it's almost midnight and I can not believe how my night has gone!

K works a whackadoodle schedule today, 6pm - 2:30am.  The girls usually gear up around 9pm and it's just misery and hell until whenever they get to sleep.  A couple of nights ago, the torture went on until 3am.  So I wasn't really going to try anything much tonight but grit my teeth and survive.

All day, I've been putting them to nap in their normal swing and bouncy chair, and after they fall asleep, I've turned it off.  The naps were a little bit shorter, but they were in a much better mood today.  I really paid attention to sleep cues and they were coming after being awake only 45 minutes (they're usually up around 90 minutes).  So I went ahead and put them down even if they had hardly been awake.  Gotta catch that drowsy moment!

Tina had one nap that didn't quite work out for her.  She did her sleep cues but would cry when I put her down.  At one point, she went ahead and sat in her bouncy chair, and just relaxed there for about an hour.  I figured a quiet time was better than nothing so I didn't disturb her.  Then I saw her kind of squinch her face and heard her let out a poo and she was asleep moments later.

Both girls woke up from naps about 8pm and I thought "ok, here we go!" and prepared for a horrible night of screaming in stereo.  I got them both fed but didn't interact with them much.  The sun was down, time to be boring.  About 8:30, I gave them each a bath.  There was some upset baby crying whenever one was stuck waiting for me to finish what I was doing with the other one, but it didn't get horrible.  By 9pm, I had both swaddled and in the crib.

Charlotte went down immediately.  She had her wubbanub and just drifted right off to sleep.  Tina did some over tired crying and got some extra cuddles and rocking.  It only took a couple of minutes to get her quiet, and then I rocked her on her back on my lap for another couple of minutes so the transition to putting her on her back in the crib wouldn't be as severe.  I put her down when her eyes were about half closed.

Between about 9:10 and 9:25, there were a couple of times that I had to go in and shush Tina or replace Charlotte's wubbanub, but it's now midnight and I haven't heard a peep in 2 and a half hours!  I'm pumping now and then I'll do a dream feed and hope they don't wake up.  Then I'll leave a note for K asking him not to wake me up when he comes home and we'll see how long the girls will go.  A dream feed is a risky maneuver, it could start the cycle of hell, but if it goes well, it could buy me a solid 5 or 6 hour chunk of sleep.

Wish me luck!