Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Twins
As the mother of identical twin daughters, I wish that I had had the benefit of Dr Wessbluth’s counsel all those years ago, when I would often feel, in the author’s words, “that there is not enough of you to go round most of the time.” And how I empathised with the mother who said, “I remember being so tired at various points that I felt my eyes closing while I was on the phone, mid sentence.” With a two year olda nd two newborn babies I can recall nodding off in the M & S pay desk queue! Dr Weissbluth is both a leading paediatrician and sleep expert and had I read his practical step-by-step guide when trying to get my babies to go to sleep, stay asleep and sleep regularly I might have been just a bit less likely to drop off in M &S.
How true I thought when reading, “sleep is not a luxury; it is a biological necessity” and, of course,Dr Weissbluth hits the nail on the exhausted head when he describes how parentsa nd twin babies suffer from the mental stress of sleep deprivation.
But I didn’t have the book then. Oh to have understood the necessity of sufficient naps, the myth of cutting down on naps to get your children to sleep earlier, the importance ofs eizing “the magic moment” – a slight quieting and staring ahead and a hint of calmness and “catching the wave” to get your twins to sleep without crying.
What this book provides is “sleeptraining” and what to do if one or both twins cries at bedtime: check and console, crying it out, sometimes with an upper limit, why it helps if mum leavest he house and there’s only dad there to soothe them when they cry (I particularly warmed to that one!). Parents working as a team, keeping sleep logs, how to cope if one parent has necessarily to do double duty, are all covered. There too is advice by age group and on premature and breastfeeding twins.
Patricia McLoughlin
Posted Sun, 09/05/2010 - 21:47 by Tricia
