It's 9:30pm, both of them are finally down, and I'm sitting on the floor of the hallway outside their room eating cereal out of the box like a raccoon, so this is where we're at!
Boy/girl twins, Kofi and Ama, born October 2 at 35+4. So they're 31 weeks actual, about 26 adjusted, and I say that up front because I know somebody's going to ask and they'd be right to.
Where we were: both in one room, two cribs, room is 70F, 1.0 TOG sleep sacks, both rolled at 5 months so no swaddle, nothing in the cribs, white noise, blackout so dark I have walked into the dresser twice. Formula since about 5 months, solids started at 6, purees and some BLW. Ama takes a pacifier. Kofi rejects it with a level of contempt I find genuinely impressive. Wake windows are 2.5-3 hours, three naps, one of which is a 30 minute cat nap in the car because that's just my life now!
And they were waking every 90 minutes to two hours. Both. Not in sync, obviously, because that would be a gift! Ama at 11:20, Kofi at 12:40, Ama at 2:15, and so on until the sun comes up and I go to work. I have been doing this since roughly Christmas. I have fallen asleep at a red light. That's the sentence I'd like anyone who wants to tell me what I'm doing wrong to sit with first.
So Friday we started Ferber. Actual Ferber, the checks, 3 then 5 then 10.
Night 1: 47 minutes. Both of them. Kofi's cry has a sound in it I have not heard before and I would like to never hear again.
Night 2: 22 minutes, then Ama slept until 5:10 and I woke up at 3am in a panic and went in to check she was breathing, which I feel is worth including.
Night 3: 6 minutes. Six! I thought we'd done it. Then Kofi woke Ama at 1am and we were back to square one until 3.
Night 4 was tonight and I don't want to talk about night 4.
Anyway. What I actually need to say is this. Everyone told me the guilt would go away when it worked, and it's sort of working, and it hasn't gone away, it's gotten worse. Because now I have proof that it works, and that means all the nights I didn't do it were nights I chose not to. And on the other side of that, every time Kofi stops crying I feel this little flash of relief and then I think: did he stop because he's okay, or did he stop because he worked out nobody's coming.
I know the studies say no measurable harm. I've read them. I've read them at 4am, and 4am is not when you should read a study. It doesn't touch the thing.
I'm not asking if I should stop. I don't think I can stop. I'm asking whether anyone else did this and felt like this, and what you did with it, because right now I'm eating cereal on a floor and I feel like something that used to be a person.
Nadia, I've read this four times and I'm going to push on one thing, gently, because I think it's the load-bearing sentence and it isn't the one you think.
"Did he stop because he's okay, or did he stop because he worked out nobody's coming."
You've built a question with no answer. There is no observation you can make from the hallway that tells you which one it is. And I don't think you're actually trying to find out. I think you're doing penance. The question is the punishment. You ask it because asking it hurts, and hurting feels like the minimum...
Ten nights. I'm saying ten nights out loud so it exists somewhere other than my head, and the thing I need to see is Kofi going back down after a wake without me, once, unprompted. That's it. That's the bar. If it's not there by the 15th we stop and I go back to being a raccoon and I'll live.
Yael, white noise is one machine, on the dresser, over on Ama's side. So it's between them in the sense that the dresser is technically in the room. I hadn't thought about it as a thing that could be wrong! Ordering...
Going to be the one who asks about adjusted age, since you flagged it yourself and then moved on.
26 adjusted is on the early edge for Ferber. Not wrong, plenty of people do it there and their pediatrician signed off, but it changes what "it's not working" would even mean, and it's worth having said out loud rather than having it whisper at you at 4am. Did their pediatrician have a view? Not asking to catch you out, asking because if someone with hands on those babies said go ahead, that's a thing you're allowed to lean on at 2am...
I'm the other answer and I'll give it carefully, because you didn't ask whether to stop and nobody here should be telling you to.
We never sleep trained. My oldest is 2 and a half and I have a three week old asleep on me right now, and I'd rather be honest about what that actually bought me than pretend it was free.
He woke up at night until he was 22 months. Twenty-two months. Some of those were brutal. I did a stretch around 14 months where I was up four times a night for six weeks straight and I do...
"A choice I could live with" and "a noble choice" being different things is going to live in my head, thank you!
And listen, I read your comment expecting to feel judged and I didn't, and I think I've been bracing for that for four days. My sister didn't sleep train and she hasn't said a word about it, and somehow her not saying a word has been louder than anything she could have actually said. I've had entire arguments with her in my head at 2am. She's asleep. She has no idea. I'm losing to a woman who isn't playing!
22...
We Ferbered at 26 weeks. Singleton, so easier than you, and I'll say that first instead of pretending my thing was your thing.
Night 1 was 38 minutes. Night 2 was 11. Night 3 was 4 minutes and then nothing, ever again. He's 8 months now and he's slept 7 to 6 since. It worked. It worked exactly like the book said it would, on the schedule the book said, and I have zero regrets.
And it was the worst thing I've done as a parent. Both of those are just true and I've stopped trying to make them fit together.
What nobody...