What happened to sleep?

I have heard a number of times over the last few weeks from lots of different women, that mums who say their baby sleeps through the night must be lying. Our twin girls have always slept through the night and have done so from about 10 weeks of age. I don’t know why. We didn’t do anything special other than introducing a bedtime routine of bath, swaddle, bottle and bed. 


Maybe it comes down to their days in special care? The first 27 days of their lives were spent in hospital. At night time, the light was always on and there was quite a bit of noise, from other babies crying or doctors and nurses walking around and talking. When we brought our girls home, that first night they didn’t sleep well. Was is because our home was quiet and dark in comparison to the noise and bright lights of the hospital?


Whatever it was, by 10 weeks they had both settled down and would sleep through the night. The transition from sleeping in their moses baskets to sharing a cot went well, as did the transition from sharing a cot together to sleeping in separate cots and when we moved them from our bedroom to their own room, again it went well and they both continued to sleep through the night.

So, what around 7 months of age has happened to our one little girl?!


M still sleeps through the night. She is the easier baby. She goes down well and stays down. 


R, however has started waking up in the night. It started off, she would wake once and after some just gentle rocking and patting we could put her back in her cot and she would stay there until morning. Gradually, she started waking more and more. Don’t get me wrong, she did lull us into a false sense of security and actually slept through a few nights after her first initial night waking. Now, though, well she wakes up every night without fail and it seems to be getting earlier and earlier. At first it would be 2/3am, then 12/1am, now it’s more like 10:30pm. 


I thought initially it was teething so I kept her topped up with calpol, teething granules and bonjela during the day, then before her bedtime bottle I would give her calpol and nurofen as suggested by a children’s nurse I know. Nothing made any difference. I then read somewhere online that calpol can actually cause babies to suffer from sleeplessness because it contains sugar and additives. As a result of reading this, I decided to scrap the calpol & nurofen and stick to the teething granules and bonjela. It worked! 


For one night only!


The following night, we were back to R waking up regularly. Initially I would have loved to bring her into bed with me and twin daddy but I was too scared that one of us would roll onto her, or that she would get too hot or worse. 


Twin daddy was more confident to have R in the bed with us, so I agreed as long as he didn’t mind then that would be ok with me if it meant we all got some sleep. At first, it worked. R slept happily in the arms of her daddy. Then, last night it all changed again! 


Twin daddy brought R into our bed as she woke up at 11:20pm. All night, she fidgeted and cried frequently. 3:30 this morning, I brought R into the living room and slept on the sofa with her so twin daddy could get some sleep. 


I have read a number of things that can cause babies to suddenly start waking in the night:


* Teething
* Too hot/too cot
* Separation anxiety 
* Illness
* Reaching developmental milestones


Both girls are getting over a cold and a gastric virus, so it could well be that but R started waking up at night time even before she was ill. 


Tonight, we are going to try something a bit different. Well, not massively different but we hope it works. R seems to get quite hot in bed, so we are going to swaddle her in just a vest and see if that works. 


She did used to sleep in a sleeping bag but started waking up hence why we started swaddling her which seemed to have solved all of our problems, until now!


Do you have any advice? Have you experienced this yourself? We would love to hear from you – please!!!!!