Twins
Triplets and Multiples
We provide pregnancy and postpartum Doula care and consulting to families with or expecting twins, triplets or more
Sleep Facts:
Before the Babies Arrive You can only go 2 days without sleep! The average person is already loosing (1,843) hours less sleep per year. ( This equals 77 days or 2.5 months without sleep per year)
Prevent Sleep Deprivation - Benefits for the parents:
Newborns cannot sleep the whole night. They sleep all the time, but they cannot fall asleep all on their own, reliably. The second reason is that newborns are so small, and need to grow so rapidly, that they physically cannot go a whole night without eating. They must wake up and eat several times a night.
Waking each other up:
This is the essential challenge created by healthy multiples. The home court advantage for the parents is Postpartum Doula(s) care.
Prematurity:
The more infants gestated in one pregnancy, the earlier they tend to be born in that pregnancy. If the infants born early are healthy, then the solution is simply waiting until they reach 4 months of age after their original expected due date. Parents see their children sleeping habits improve.
Illness:
If the illness is severe enough, then due to prematurity or not, it can profoundly interfere with good sleeping and normal sleep development. All the comments in this essay relate to healthy infants. The complications created by serious illness require specific medical guidance to achieve normal sleep.