#Twinning: 'The delicate art of getting baby twins to sleep'

By Laura Turner|

Imagine the song 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' lulling your baby to sleep. Nice, isn’t it? You get all those dreamy, lovey-dovey feels. The baby is nodding off, you tiptoe away and fall into bed for some of your own sleep—this parenting thing isn’t so hard, after all...

Ha ha ha ha HA HA HA.

Now repeat the song 45,000 times to weird, slightly off-tune backing music that only plays when you press the heart of a flat-faced blue toy elephant. Now cue sleep deprivation-induced psychosis.

Laura Turner is learning that getting twins to sleep is a delicate art form. (Supplied)

Dan and I swore we wouldn’t use sleep aids, pacifiers or white noise machines when trying to get the twins to sleep. Then the real world kicked in and suddenly we own a thousand pacifiers and the singing elephant has never worked so hard in his short, polyester-filled life.

As new parents of twins, you are warned about sleep deprivation. You read about it, you try to prepare yourself for it, and even in the first week or two you think, 'I can handle this, this isn’t so bad.'

But as I found, by about week three you don’t know your first name any more and you could have sworn the beady eyes of the singing elephant just followed you around the room.

'Suddenly we own a thousand pacifiers and the singing elephant has never worked so hard in his short, polyester-filled life.' (Supplied)

We’re on a three hour feed cycle with the twins right now. You’d think that would mean three hour blocks of sleep—not so bad, really.

What it really means is one twin waking and smashing their feed, lulling you into a false sense of (sleep) security, and then the other waking and deciding to take an hour to finish drinking.

Throw in a few screaming sessions (usually a baby, but sometimes me) and a poonami or two and all of a sudden the clock is telling you there’s only an hour left until the next feed is due to start. Now multiply that by eight feeds a day, times two babies, and you’re on the road to Crazy Town.

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What really hurts is when you finally get both babies sorted and tiptoe back to bed, but you’re so wired from the screaming poonami session that you can’t get back to sleep. Guess I’ll just lie here then.

I knew Dan had hit his sleep-deprived low when I overheard my usually placid partner verbally abuse the microwave when it beeped. And I knew I was spent when I was feeding one baby and the other started screaming in her bed on the other side of the room and I couldn’t get up to help her. That’s when I started crying too.

I’m still learning ways to keep one baby from crying while feeding the other; I’ll report back when I’ve found a foolproof solution. Don’t hold your breath.

'As I found, by about week three with newborn twins you don’t know your first name any more.' (Supplied)

While pacifiers and aids like the weird blue elephant help, they’re really just band-aids stemming the tide of the baby rage tsunami that’s (always) about to hit. In saying that, I should cut the weird blue elephant some slack.

I almost cried myself last night when it appeared he was running out of steam. His twinkle twinkle music began resembling that of a haunted carnival ride and was getting slower and weirder by the second.

Suddenly, Dan and I were left feeling a little vulnerable. With no elephant to lull the girls to sleep, there would be no band-aid for when the going gets tough. Sometimes his tunes are all that work, so how would we cope?

Sleep? What's sleep? (Supplied)

Sleep deprivation meant it took us a little longer than it should have to work out that the elephant's batteries were just running low, and a simple screwdriver to his furry back and a couple of new AAs were all we needed to be back in business. Soon, we were all ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ again.

We’re still dreaming of sleep though—oh, 'how I wonder what you are...'

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