Cry it out with twins

I'm really not a fan of cry-it-out (CIO). However, I no longer believe it should be avoided at all costs, either. There are worse things than having your babies cry for a long period at bedtime until they go to sleep - and for us, one of those things is having your babies cry for long periods of time at night until they go to sleep because Mom is too exhausted to wake up and care for them. Oops.

We had another one of those "too exhausted to wake" nights recently, and it prompted me to do another round of CIO. We've done CIO before after two months of unsuccessfully working with no-cry methods, including the end of our cosleeping, when Iliana and Lenora were seven months old. I never felt comfortable with my decision to resort to CIO, though, and I got back into the habit of nursing them to drowsiness . . . and sometimes to sleep. Again. And the sleep associations redeveloped, and the nightwakings came back. Then I got sick - and realized that night wakings due to sleep associations are a luxury we can't afford. While I could handle their extra wakings when I was healthy, being sick and handling nightwakings pushed me past the point of being able to care for my children.

CIO with twins is a bit more complicated than CIO without twins. You have two temperaments to consider, not one. If you are in a small apartment, like we are, then they will hear each other crying and keep each other up to some extent.

And then there are all the questions about which version of CIO to use. I started with Ferber's method, just at bedtime, and over one week of CIO plus the last three days have ended up doing something very different. What I do is more hands-on when the babies are upset, and more hands-off when they are calming down. If they are worked up, I will do anything to calm them down again - even nurse them a little. The calmer they are, the less I interfere. Two nights ago and tonight it worked amazingly well. Last night I accidentally nursed them to sleep, oops.

I also see the brief visits to soothe differently now that I have more experience. Ferber says that they are there to reassure the parents that the child is OK and to reassure the child that the parent is there. I see them as a way to keep the baby from getting too worked up. Tonight, the girls seemed really upset when I first left the room, so I went back in after only a minute. But that was the only time I went in - after that, they slowly wound down, and then got quiet, and the whole CIO was over in less than ten minutes. Two nights ago CIO only took 15 minutes. That is much better than the 90 minutes scream-fest when I used Ferber's method for the first time two months ago. And much better than an hour or more of crying in the middle of the night while Mom and Dad, two feet away, sleep through it all - or, if I woke, fell asleep before actually getting up.

Something else is different this time around besides having more experience. I also have no guilt. I still consider myself an attached parent in spite of using CIO, and my babies seem attached as well. I actually had fun tonight when I went in to soothe them because I was so sure I am doing the right thing. Why? Well, it's because of how they acted the day after I was sleeping through their cries. They were MAD at me. They fussed whenever I was around, and quit only when I left. I gave them some extra attention that evening, and by the next day things seemed to be smoothed over and they seemed to have forgiven me. A couple days later we tried CIO - and they were fine the next day. Perfectly normal and cheerful. Of course, I did make sure I coslept with Iliana a little in the early morning since she is more sensitive emotionally, to help smoothe things out a little :-) I really like cosleeping, but these days it is a treat I enjoy less frequently since it leads to nursing to sleep which leads to - sleep association problems!