A Word on Scheduling Twins

One of the most challenging parts about my job as a twin mommy is to balance meeting my girls individual needs and maintaining sanity through scheduling. When the girls were really small it was much easier. Neither one could go past 3 hours so we would feed one baby when they woke up and fussed and generally by the end of that feeding the next baby was ready to go. The NICU helped us get on this schedule and we just kept it. Now that the girls are getting bigger their needs are becoming so different. Gracie could probably sleep 8 hours at night and during the day could probably go to a 5 hour feeding schedule. Abby, on the other hand, can only sleep 5 hours and during the day eats every 4 hours.

So the dilema is always whether or not to wake Gracie to accomodate Abby's schedule. My answer to this questions is YES! If I let each baby dictate her own schedule it would be chaos. I would be feeding all the time and would never sleep. So what we do is feed Abby when she is ready and then feed Gracie right after. We have found that giving Gracie a little less formula (cause she is the type of kid that would eat until she pukes) helps this process so she is hungry at the next feeding. It is tough to keep them on the same schedule but it seems necessary.