By nature I'm not the most structured, rule-following person. But I do like to have a plan, even if I don't strictly stick to it. I liked reading the book because I felt like it gave me a plan - something to shoot for. It wasn't always perfect, and still isn't, but by now I feel like we have a good routine down.
When the twins were newborn, I did not stick to a schedule. I was big on the routine - we always did things in the same order. Wake, eat, play, sleep. They didn't eat at the same times every day, but it was always 2-3 hours apart. Around 6 weeks I started being a little more consistent. I still didn't feed them at the same times every day, but we developed a consistent nighttime routine that seemed to help them sleep longer at night. We started doing baths at bed time, then getting them in bed at the same time every night.
Up until that point, I had fed the babies at the same time even in the night. If one woke up to eat, I woke the other up too. But by 6 weeks, I wanted them to start sleeping longer. I let them sleep as long as they would sleep, and in the night I fed them seperately. For a few weeks, it meant that I woke up twice as often during the night, but it helped them not get into the habit of eating if they didn't need it. Then for the first morning feeding (which still wasn't at the same time everyday), I made sure to wake them up and feed them at the same time. The days when I didn't do that were some hard hard days. Those were the days when I would wake up, feed one baby, then play for about an hour and put them down for a nap. Right then, the other baby would wake, play for about an hour, then go down for a nap. Then if I was lucky, I'd have about 30 minutes of them both sleeping before the first baby would wake up again. And that would go on all day. Sometimes those days were fun because I'd get to spend more time playing individually with my kids. But generally, they were just exhausting. For that reason, it was super important to me to keep them on the same schedule! In my opinion, there's no other way.
Now that they are a little older, we are on a bit more of a schedule. A flexible one, but still a schedule. So here is the way we do things now:
7 AM (give or take a little) - wake, nurse, get dressed and eat breakfast
9-11 AM - nap
11 AM - nurse and lunch
1-3 PM - nap
4 PM - nurse
4-6 PM - usually spent in their swings in the kitchen while I cook, do laundry, make baby food, clean...whatever :) they generally take a 15-30 minute cat nap during this time
6 PM - dinner
7 PM - bath, nurse, in bed by 7:30
Occasionally Charlie will wake up for a 3 AM feeding (especially when he's teething) but for the most part they sleep about 12 hours/night straight. I do realize that I am extremely blessed and that not all babies do this! But also, we worked really hard in the beginning to get our kids to sleep. We started sleep training when they were 6 weeks old. It was really hard to let them cry it out (reasonably), but so worth it. My theory was that I can't physically rock two babies to sleep at the same time, so I needed to be able to put them down for naps and have them fall asleep on their own. It was hard in the beginning, but it didn't take long for them to get used to it. And now they rarely cry when going down for a nap. Hooray for good sleeping babies!
I loved the flexibility of our routine when they were little. But I do have to say that I LOVE the predictability of our schedule now. It is so much easier to plan my day and know when I can go grocery shopping, go on a walk, or do whatever I need to do. And seriously, twins on the same schedule = best thing ever. Twins on opposite schedules = misery and exhaustion. Wake the sleeping baby. It is so worth it!
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