Can your twins sleep in the same bedroom?

Absolutely.

Start Your Twins in One Crib

When we brought our girls home, they both shared a crib for several months.

When they started to roll over and get a little too crowded, we moved each girl to her own crib but kept them in the same room.

Two Cribs

Remember, your twins have been together since those early days inside the womb. They are completely used to each other and we noticed that ours actually missed each other when we first moved them to separate cribs. Our girls would squawk at each other to make sure the other was in the room.

Two Beds

When the time comes to move out of the cribs, you’ll probably want two beds, too. You should be able to fit two twin-sized beds (yes, they call them twin beds) in the floorspace of even a small bedroom. Alternatively, you can look at bunk beds or a trundle bed to economize space.

Advantages of Sharing a Room

• You only have to decorate one room.
• When you hear one of your twins crying in the middle of the night, you don’t have to figure out which bedroom to run to.
• All the kids’ clothes will be in one room, which makes it easy for dressing when they are young and makes it easy to share clothes (especially if you have identical twins)
• If you put both your twins in the same room, you don’t have to buy that bigger house right away.

Disadvantages of Sharing a Room

• As they get older, your twins will wake each other up. Most often this happens in the morning, when you are hoping for a few more minutes of sleep.
• Quieting down for bedtime is a challenge. Our girls like to chatter and sing to each other after we put them in their cribs. This leads to about an hour of activity before they calm down and finally go to sleep.
• Naps in the same room are difficult because your twins will just want to play with each other and not sleep.
• Boy/Girl twins will eventually reach the age where sharing a room is awkward.

If you’ve already had your twins, do they share a room?

When your babies are newborns and very young, you can have the twins sleep in the same crib.

As they grow, they will each need their own crib but you can still have them in the same room.

However, as they head toward their one year mark, you’ll notice that nap times are getting more difficult. Your twins may not fall asleep like they used to.

Now they babble and squawk at each other and neither seems to fall asleep quickly or at all.

To help solve this problem, we turned to The Sleep Lady, who suggested we start separating the girls for nap time.

Since we opted not to buy a bigger house when we found out we were having twins, we didn’t have a spare bedroom to put a sleeping girl in. So one girl stayed in her crib and the other went into a pack-and-play in our master bedroom.

This separation was great. Both girls started falling asleep quicker and took better naps. When one girl woke up, the other could continue sleeping uninterrupted if needed.

At bed time, the girls still both went down in their cribs in the same room. They would talk and chirp for awhile but we didn’t see the same problems that we did with nap time. After all, it’s easier to fall asleep when it’s dark and there aren’t as many fun things to do just outside their door like during the day when the sun is out and their brothers are running around.

So if you’re having trouble with your toddler twins sleeping during naps, try separating them. You may then have a return to a quiet house where you can get all those “to-do” items done. Or just take a nap, too.

One of the most trying aspects of having newborn twins is sleep deprivation.

Sleep deprivation is torture.

Think about those old war or spy movies where the hero is literally tortured by being forced to stay awake. Just when the hero falls asleep, the bad guys wake him up.

You, my friend, are the hero.

Unfortunately, your twins play the part of the torturer. Not that they don’t love you. They just haven’t learned to sleep through the night yet.

By the time we had our twins, we had already had two boys. Since they were both singletons, my wife ended up caring for them most nights because she was breastfeeding.

I didn’t know how spoiled I was.

With twins, your wife can’t do it all herself. This means that you will be working the night shift as well.

Since you will be up and down all night with your babies, you need to be ready to deal with sleep deprivation. It’s time to make a plan.

The key to surviving the early days of your newborn twins is to have some plans in place to overcome the inevitable sleep deprivation.

Sleep When You Can

You must sleep when you get the chance. This means that when babies are asleep, you should be too. You’ll be tempted to get stuff done once the babies are asleep. That “stuff” can wait. Emails are not as important as sleep. Your favorite T.V. show is not as important as sleep. Gaming is not as important as sleep. You need a nap. Take it. Sometimes this means laying down at 7:00 p.m. Do it. Sacrificing some of your normal activities is a small price to pay for functionality. Besides, your twins won’t be the torturers forever–there will be a return to normalcy in your near future. So sleep now.

Set Expectations

Sleep deprivation will lower your ability to work effectively, communicate properly, and live normally. This will impact the people around you. Set expectations with your coworkers, friends, and family.

Let everyone know that you aren’t getting any sleep and that you won’t be able to do X, attend Y, or deliver Z. Offer alternatives. Make compromises. But communicate the reason for your altered physical and mental state. Most people are very understanding.

Don’t Take it Personally

Sleep deprivation will try your marriage like almost nothing else you’ve ever seen. Since both you and your spouse will be tortured with no sleep, you must remember to not take anything personally.

If your wife snaps at you, it is because she is beyond tired. If something didn’t get done like you liked it, blame the sleep deprivation.

You’ll live a long, happy life if you don’t take anything personally while you or your spouse are under the effects of sleep deprivation. It will probably be the most charitable action you take in your marriage.

Your twin babies, while the source of your sleep deprivation, are not intentionally torturing you. So don’t take your babies’ actions personally either.

How Are You Doing?

After my paternity leave, I returned to work but was still suffering from sleep deprivation. Whenever anyone asked how I was doing, I answered, “I’m tired.”

You’ll be tired too. But hang in there. Your babies will start sleeping through the night and you will, too.

When I first learned we were having twins, I was in shock. I stayed in that state of shock for at least several weeks.

This shock was fueled by fears and questions of how I would successfully care for my family.

One of my big concerns was how my new, bigger family would fit into our current home. I spent several days looking for a new house and running numbers through mortgage calculators online.

Did we end up buying a new home? No, and you shouldn’t either.

Why?

If you want to live a long, happy life, don’t make a pregnant woman, especially one pregnant with twins, move her family and house.

Your wife will get extremely large with twins. This means possible bed rest and definite exhaustion. Think for a minute about how she might handle packing up the house, moving to a new location, and getting settled into a new place.

Moving is stressful even without a pregnancy. So don’t do it.

The good news is that you can wait until the babies arrive and reassess the situation.

Amazingly, twins don’t initially take up too much more space than a singleton baby. In fact, you can even consolidate and sleep both twin babies in the same crib for a few months.

Until the twins start getting mobile, you can survive in your current home assuming you have space for one baby. Twins share a bath, changing table, rocking chair, and even a blanket for tummy time on the floor.

Take a deep breath. Stop searching for a new house. You’ll have plenty of new expenses anyway. Why add a bigger mortgage to the list?

When you bring your baby twins home, can you let them sleep in the same crib?

Absolutely.

In fact, at the hospital, the nurses had our twins together in the same bassinet. When we got home, we just continued this pattern. From their time in utero, each twin has constantly been with their sibling. Why not continue?

We found that our babies would actually turn towards each other when they were sleeping side by side in the same crib.

As newborns, your babies aren’t going to move around much so where you put them is where they will stay. In the crib, this means that you can have both babies sleep together.

We’d swaddle each baby individually and then have another blanket swaddle them together.

What about wiggly babies?

Eventually your babies will start to wiggle and hit each other. Don’t freak out. They were doing this in the womb for months (just ask your wife). If it doesn’t bother them, it shouldn’t bother you.

When to Separate

We kept our girls in the same crib for several months until they started getting bigger and rotating around. We knew it was time to separate when were jarred from sleep because Twin A had put her foot in Twin B’s head and Twin B was crying.

When that time arrived, we had two cribs in the same room, with one baby in each. The girls seemed to miss each other at first but would call out to each other via squawks or gurgles in a form of echolocation (think bats) to make sure their sister was near.

Hard to Sleep?

So you may ask: Don’t they wake each other up if they sleep in the same room or crib? No, not necessarily. Typically one twin can sleep through the cries of the other. You’ll even find one of your babies with arms or legs sprawled over the other with both twins sleeping contently.

Some Extra Advantages

Feel safe and confident starting with one crib. This may give you time to move an older child out of his crib like we had to do, or can give you time to defer that expense a few months.

If you choose to bottle feed your twin babies, you’ll face the challenge of making bottles in the middle of the night.

The middle of the night feeds are generally heralded when one of your babies starts crying. This jars you from your slumber and pulls you out of your warm bed. You may even find yourself sitting on the edge of your bed trying to figure out what is the next thing you are supposed to do.

Because of the bewildered stupor that you will likely experience during night feedings, you need to have everything ready before you go to bed.

Before you go to bed, lay out burp cloths, bottles, formula, and a container of water.

When your babies start crying for food, they want food and they want it now. The longer you take, the louder the cries and the more frustrated you will get, especially when you’re sleepy.

We’d have bottles and nipples ready on the kitchen counter next to the formula canister and the feeding log. The bottles would have the water already pre-measured and ready to add the formula to. Dump, shake, and go!

For water, we filled up a Tupperware-style water bottle with a flip top lid and kept it on the counter. The big advantage of this was that the bottle was always room temperature and ready for immediately feeding the baby. No, your babies don’t need warm milk, so save yourself some time and frustration by going the room temperature route.

As with many things when it comes to twins, you’ll find yourself making choices–and sacrifices–constantly. In this case, you’ll probably weigh the benefits of being organized (especially if it doesn’t come naturally) against a few minutes of extra sleep. Do yourself a favor, prepare when you are awake so you can sleep walk through the process quickly and thus quickly return to bed.

You’ll keep your sanity with any infant if you can get your baby on a predictable schedule. This is even more true with twins.

Should you keep your twins on the same schedule? The answer is, “It depends.”

It depends on a few factors, but primarily comes down to the time of day and how many helpers you have.

I’m a big fan of The Baby Whisperers’ EASY steps. The “Y” in EASY is for “your time.” Once the baby [E]ats, has some [A]ctivity time, and goes to [S]leep, [Y]ou can relax a little.

We’ve found that getting the babies to sleep at the same time is the biggest factor in keeping them on the same schedule.

Nighttime Schedule

Caring for twins overnight is a handful, to say the least.

If you don’t have a 1:1 adult to baby ratio with twins at night, you’re going to run yourself into the ground very quickly. Stop right now and get help.

My wife and I found it worked best when one daughter woke up hungry, to wake the other daughter and feed her at the same time. This helped us avoid servicing one baby, getting her back to bed, with us crawling into bed just to be pulled back out to help the other baby. (Or trying to remember who’s turn it was to get up with which baby in the middle of sleepy stupor!)

Daytime Schedule

If it is just you (or your wife) taking care of the babies during the day then it might be to your advantage to have the twins on a slightly staggered schedule. This allows the caregiver to be able to feed and diaper one baby at a time. This will mean that there will be a little less time for you, and it may feel like you are on a never-ending cycle of feeding, changing, and napping babies all day long. But it is a little easier as you’re getting used to caring for two newborns.

If you’ve got a helper, keep the twins on the same schedule and do everything in tandem. As you grow in your caregiving skills and/or after help goes home, you may find that you’re able to keep the twins on pretty much the same schedule. It is possible to feed them at the same time or in rapid succession and get them down for naps at the same time.

Schedules Change

The older your twins get, the easier it will be to align their schedules. Just remember–about the time you get comfortable with your routine, something will change. Roll with it.