and nine months of age, your babies will discover each other. This is
where the party really begins! Now your problem is that they are having
too much fun entertaining each other. They won’t wake up to each other’s
crying but will wake up to each other’s laughter and carrying on. They
have built-in buddies. What helps in this situation is to have a toy that
can be played with quietly in bed while a baby’s siblings continue to
sleep. In our family we used Busy-Box-type activity toys. Other families
place small, noiseless toys in each child’s bed after the children have
fallen asleep so the baby who wakes up can play quietly and
independently with the toy.
Strongly discourage your multiples from getting out of their cribs on
their own. All babies should stay in their cribs until given permission, but
for multiples there is an additional safety issue—the threat one
aggressive toddler poses to another when unsupervised. We convinced
our triplets that climbing in and out of their cribs was impossible without
the help of a stepladder. When the stepladder was not available, they
didn’t get in and out of their cribs. They slept in their cribs until after
their third birthday without any episodes of unauthorized entry or exit.
Routine for Multiples
The routine of each baby shouldn’t vary, but the eat/sleep schedule of
your multiple-birth babies with respect to one another may be impacted
by many factors. How many babies are there? How many feeders are
there? Are you breast-feeding? Each baby should have feeding time,
waketime, and naptime. Don’t change that order, except for late-night
feedings when there is no waketime, and for premature babies who aren’t
neurologically mature enough to tolerate waketime.
If you have triplets and there is only one caregiver for them most of
the time, you may choose to stagger your babies’ schedules. Here’s how
this might work: The feeder (probably you) starts the process on the hour
with baby A, finishes half an hour later and goes on to baby B, while baby
A has waketime in a bouncy seat nearby. At the top of the next hour, baby
C wakes for feeding and baby A is ready for naptime. When all three