Twin Talks: Pregnancy and Parenting Multiple Children · New Mommy Media | Independent Podcast Network

Sleep Training Your Twins

·41 min·2 clips

Jen lays out cry it out, graduated extinction, and fading as the three sleep-training methods.

1. Twin Talks focuses on sleep training methods for twins and multiple children, with Christine Stewart Fitzgerald framing the topic around routines, crying, and parental consistency. 2. Jen Varela of Sugar Night Night joins as a gentle sleep expert, and parents Jules Mess, Crystal, and Garrett Massey contribute first-hand twin and triplet sleep experiences. 3. The episode asks what parents should do when twins are not sleeping regularly and whether cry it out, alternatives, or sleep coaching better fit family life. 4. Christine describes a news story about Jade Ward, who was told she probably would not have children after neuroblastoma treatment at age 4. 5. That story turns into a pregnancy surprise: Jade first hears twins, then later an ultrasound tech tells her to “add a third onto that one,” revealing triplets. 6. Jules Mess says her triplet girls came home from the NICU on a different half-hour schedule, which meant “a baby waking up every 30 minutes.” 7. Crystal says her twins were placed on an hour-apart schedule in the NICU and that she was “running on fumes” by six weeks. 8. Garrett Massey says his first baby slept through the night by 4 weeks and his twins did so by 6 weeks through consistency and routine. 9. Sunny says her four children are “pretty good sleepers,” but she thinks identical twin girls around 2.5 years old were different from her two singletons ages 5 and 3. 10. Jen says sleep training has been around for a long time, but it has become especially important in the United States because families often lack village-style support and return to work earlier. 11. Jen explains that sleep coaching uses a longer-term approach to sleep hygiene and self-regulation, while night weaning is not necessarily required. 12. Jen says twins usually cannot simply sleep until they wake to eat, because parents of multiples need a feeding schedule to protect sleep. 13. Jen also says books on sleep often have to be compromised for multiples, and she quotes Dr. Polly Moore’s advice about “break[ing] the glass on the emergency box” to adjust schedules. 14. Garrett describes a bedtime routine built around a bath, a song or book, and “night, night time,” then returning briefly when crying starts. 15. Jules says a 90-minute sleep program helped after she read Polly Moore’s book and learned that missing a sleepy zone could mean another 90 minutes awake. 16. Jen breaks the methods into cry it out, graduated extinction, and fading, with the parent’s answer changing from full non-response to timed check-ins to staying with the child. 17. Crystal says she used graduated extinction with two-minute and four-minute increments and had to step outside because the crying was hard during postpartum hormones. 18. Jen says effective sleep work depends on drowsy-but-awake placement, a consistent answer, good feeding information from a pediatrician or lactation consultant, and a temperament match. 19. The tone stays practical and parent-to-parent, with detailed method explanations, personal stories, and a Q&A format that fits expectant and new twin parents. 20. Parents who want concrete twin sleep routines and method comparisons will likely benefit most; parents looking for quick fixes or no-cry strategies may skip it.

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