Midnight Miscommunication

When Ella was around 8wks old, she started sleeping through the night. The twins will be 8 weeks tomorrow. Because Drew needs a certain number of calories per day (550 at minimum) we need to make sure that we feed 80ml of 30 calorie per ounce formula or fortified breastmilk 7 times a day. That was a improvement over the 70ml of 28 calorie stuff we were giving him 8 times a day. We had been waking Drew every 3 hours, and then waking and feeding Lily when we were finished to avoid her inevitably waking us up moments after we went back to sleep. I'm completely against waking a sleeping baby, so its hard getting out of bed to feed Drew. But you do what you have to do.

So the other night we decided that we were going to experiment and see how long they would sleep for if left alone. SEVEN HOURS!! Yes! 7!! Okay, time to change the schedule. I'm no math wiz, but we figured our that if we fed him just over 90ml six times a day we would hit our number. We changed our schedule to 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 8pm, 12pm to make sure we got our 6 feeds a day in, but we were stuffing the poor little guy trying to feed him 90ml (thats just about 3oz) per feed. But we got it in, and hoped for the same 7hr stretch the next night. The best laid plans....

Both Lily & Drew were fed at 8pm, wrapped up and put in their cribs. I followed to bed shortly thereafter. At about midnight we heard them crying. Martin got up to take care of them. Around 2:30 he woke me up to pump. By 3:00am someone was awake and screaming and it was my turn. I made my way down the hall, and there was Drew, wailing away. I went back in to Martin and asked when they had eaten, and he said that he just fed Drew at 2:30 for the second time and that he wasn't hungry again. So I rocked him. I changed his diaper. I rocked him some more. After about a half an hour of him being unsettled, I decided to swaddle him up and let him cry it out. (Time to toughen up, boy!) Just as I was putting him down, Ms. Lily started to wail. I knew she hadn't been fed in a while, so since I was in there I decided to nurse her to buy us more sleep. Well, Drew just wasn't having this, so he cried and cried and screamed and yelled, until he woke up Martin. Martin came into the nursery, very tired and confused and asked what was wrong with Drew. Here's how the conversation went:

Martin: What's wrong with Drew?

Me: I have no clue. I rocked him and changed him and swaddled him, and I have no clue.

Martin: Well did you feed him?

Me: No, you told me he had just eaten for the second time in about 3 hours and that he wasn't hungry.

Martin: Um, I must have been sleeping when you were talking to me because he ate at about midnight so hes probably starving.

In the morning, we agreed to work under the assumption that if they wake up at any point during the night that they are hungry - feed them. This will avoid future miscommunication in the middle of the night.

And HELLO!? What happened to our 7 hour stretch!! Maybe next week.