Our baby girl suddenly turned from a baby who spent the first few months of her life pretty much asleep into a total night owl. My baby is a bad sleeper: how she went from a sleeping beauty to a night owl.
Let’s start on a positive note
In October 2020, we welcomed our first child, our baby son Vic. Vic had been a most relaxed baby from the get-go, especially when it came to sleeping. Vic is now almost 4 years old, and his sleepless nights I can count on two hands. And he still prefers to sleep for a solid 12 hours at night! It’s fantastic, but we now know that Vic is an exception in this respect.
Pregnant again
In August 2022, we found out I was pregnant again, and in September the first ultrasound was scheduled. We obviously knew what we expected to see on the ultrasound, so we went in pretty relaxed. I was asked to lie down, and the ultrasound technician positioned the ultrasound head. And then: WHAM BANG! Yes, there they were, neatly side by side, each with their own amniotic sac and two beating hearts. Twins! A huge shock but, hey, if they would only sleep half as well as Vic, we’d all be fine.
The twins were born: welcoming Ray and Loa
Ray and Loa were born in March 2023, at 37 weeks and one day. Both were a bit small, but they had a good start and after only 3 days we were allowed to go home. Loa was the smallest and wasn’t able to maintain a good temperature for the first week, but, wow, this girl could sleep! We were greatly relieved. We thought, how it would help her grow and gain strength. In the first months, Loa was quite relaxed, unlike her twin brother. He did sleep, but he preferred to sleep on one of us, he always wanted to hold on to something of ours and also preferred to have his sister with him. It was so cute! But soon we noticed that they couldn’t sleep together in one room. Ray slept restlessly for the first year; he woke up frequently, but he was always quick to calm down. But his crying invariably woke up Loa, reason enough not to let them sleep in a room together because yes, Loa did sleep.
But then…
As well as Loa slept for the first few months, things got worse after that. She would wake up as many as 5 or 6 times a night. This was regularly compounded by Ray, and with a military husband who was frequently away from home, things didn’t not improve for anyone. She was inconsolable and angry and eventually had to be calmed down with a bottle. This was far from ideal, but still we gave in to the bottle to get some sleep ourselves. Last summer, we reached truly the lowest point. Nights awake, with a distressed and inconsolable baby meant that our little daughter became overly tired, and we weren’t much better off either. We really desperately needed better rest at night.
Asking for help… I’m not very good at it. I told myself for the longest time that it was part of the job, that we should not complain because every parent had to deal with it. That not having had these issues with Vic had been a luxury. The nights were getting worse and shorter. Every night one of us sat next to her bed for hours. Loa was really tenacious and leaving her to cry by herself did not feel right. We had never let Vic fall asleep crying. Probably also because it didn’t happen often and because we had “all the time” for it. With twins added, going from 1 to 3 kids is a transition; so, naturally, you are hands short. You never have the feeling that you have enough time for all of your three kids.
"I told myself for the longest time that it was part of the job, that we should not complain because every parent had to deal with it."
Help from a sleep coach
I went on for a very long time thinking that we should not go that way because, yes, we had to be able to do this ourselves and because I couldn’t see how anyone would be able to really help us. Until one night I came across a post from @sleepstorie and I realized that I was reading it at 3am. So, I decided it would be okay to send her a message. The very next morning I immediately sent a text and both of us had a good feeling about how they approached our “problem”. Thus we decided to schedule a counseling session with her. The discussion with Floor was like a breath of fresh air for us, she was able to clearly explain Loa’s sleep cycle and had a good understanding of what we were up against. Talking to Floor allowed us to take a closer look at our situation because due to our many stressful, sleepless nights, we couldn’t see it for ourselves. We received sound advice, which we started to apply right away.
We are now a few weeks on and, even though we are not there yet, the nights are already going so much better. Loa is much more at peace and so are we. Asking for help has brought us so much further in these few weeks, I can recommend it to everyone! Sometimes you can’t see the forest for all the trees, and it’s great when someone helps!
Photo by: fotosvanjess
Heading photo by: Milou Sebastiaansen fotografie