[tjhollysprings]

Our 14 month old twins have been home for 2 months now from Guatemala. We have no other children. Five weeks ago we started the Ferber (cry it out) method and for the last 3 weeks they have slept 12 hours a night along with a 90 minute nap. Now we're not naive enough to think that this bliss will last forever, but we're definitely enjoying it while we can. Our kids still have plenty of other physical, developmental and behavior issues for us to work on, but obviously a well-rested (and happier) household makes these issues much more tolerable.

What follows is a list of tips and caveats we learned along the way. We are not experts at all, so I hope others might share too. Most of these you can find in the numerous sleep references that are out there, but you'll be hard pressed to see all of these in one place, let alone in the context of adoption.

1. Kind of a no-brainer, but keep multiples on the same schedule, unless you really need more stress in your life. Sometimes if one is crying and awake (and really awake) 30 minutes early, we'll take them out of the crib to play until the other wakes up. The few times we had to change their schedule did not go well - it usually meant they would refuse to nap and would have to go to bed earlier.

2. A successful Ferber does NOT mean no crying at all. Our daughter still ALWAYS cries everytime we put her in her crib, anywhere from 1 to 10 minutes. At this point it's easy for us to ignore, but we're hoping she'll eventually give up the fight completely.

3. Even good sleepers make noises each night (playing, whining, nightmares, etc.), which for us last anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes. You can ignore 90% of these and let them fall back asleep. Trust me - you'll KNOW when you really need to intervene, like for leaky diapers, teething, or a fever. However, we're still usually "fooled" once or twice each week (a very distressed and difficult to console baby, but no apparent problem).

4. Avoiding leaky diapers during a 12 hour shift can be tricky, but it's worth the investment. Huggies makes a very popular overnight diaper, but they are difficult to find in size 3, so we use a regular Huggies with an inserted maxipad. Works like a charm.

5. To help with attachment, my wife and I still feed the kids a bottle of milk before bedtime. In fact, if they don't see a bottle when we take them to their room for bed, they get pretty upset. And they usually want to feed themselves with the bottle, but we don't let them since again it's for attachment. We hope to wean them off of this in a few more months, when we feel the attachment is secure - I'll post again with an update.

6. The kids now rarely wake each other up at night, which really surprised us since they can be quite loud at times. It was not the case when they first came home, so of course we're very grateful.

7. Keep thier room as dark as possible. Axe the nightlight, and install a dimmer switch for emergency diaper changes and temperature readings. We like our ear thermometer, but we have to follow the supplied directions exactly or we get bad readings.

[McNally720]

It's amazing what a good night's sleep will do, isn't it? Congrats on finding what works!

I totally agree on the super-diaper needed to get through the night. I found that it was helpful to switch to the next size up for night-time use only.

We also used the happiest baby on the block "heartbeat" music for months--it was great white noise that really seemed to cue MAM that it was time for a "big sleep".

Sleep tight, everyone!

[JeannineW]

Another trick to making it through the night is Diaper Doublers. They are like a maxi pad but they are absorbent all the way through and don't have adhesive. They aren't widely available. I have only been able to find them at Food Lion. We've had to use them with all of our babies at times. I also second the size bigger diaper at night.

[hopeful-4-twins]

I wish I had known about the diaper trick for nights...it would have helped MANY times!!!!