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As a parent of newborn twins, you may be wondering how many hours of sleep your babies actually need in order to thrive.
Newborn babies feed around the clock, so they sleep in small but frequent chunks. In general, you can expect your babies to sleep for about eight or nine hours during daytime hours and for about eight hours during nighttime hours...but the sleep will only come in two- or three-hour sessions at a time.
Breastfed babies feed a little bit more often than those who are bottle-fed, so the exact length of time between sleep sessions and feeds can vary slightly, depending on how your babies are fed.
While breastfed babies wake up to feed every two or three hours, bottle-fed babies wake up to eat every three or four hours.
Newborns who sleep longer than four hours should be woken up every three or four hours to feed to promote proper weight gain during their first few weeks of life.
According to the National Sleep Foundation, newborns aged zero to three months need between 14 and 17 hours of sleep in a 24-hour period. This can be achieved throughout a combination of daytime naps and nighttime sleep sessions, since newborns don't have a set overnight sleep schedule in place just yet.
Because every baby and their sleep needs are different, the exact number of hours of sleep required isn't set in stone. Some newborns can sleep up to 18 or 19 hours in a day.
Infants aged four to 11 months require about 12 to 15 hours of sleep each day, which can also be divided among daytime naps and overnight sleep sessions.
But if you're concerned, even in the slightest, that your babies are sleeping too often or too long, let their pediatrician or health care provider know and ask for their advice.
Your doctor can also confirm when it's safe to let your babies sleep for longer stretches overnight and at which point you can pivot to focus on getting their required calories in during their daytime feeds instead. You can read about how to wean your twins off of overnight feeds, here.
Some infants reach this point around two or three months of age, but others need more time, until they're closer to five or six months old.
Sleeping through the night
As your babies grow, the total length of sleep they need will lessen, making room for longer wake windows. You'll find their daytime snoozes will shorten and their overnight sleep sessions will get longer, which is exactly what you want, as it means you, as parents, will also score longer sleep sessions overnight.
According to Stanford Medicine Children's Health, "most babies don't start sleeping through the night (six to eight hours) without waking until they are about three months old, or until they weigh 12 or 13 pounds."
They also say that about "two-thirds of babies are able to sleep through the night on a regular basis" by the time they are six months old.
If you plan on doing sleep training with your twins, here's what worked for us with ours.
Sleep needs for babies for the first two years
Again, these numbers may differ slightly from baby to baby and depending on how premature your babies might have been born (those who were born extra early may need a little more sleep to catch up on all the developing they had left to do before they were born...you can read more about the importance of adjusted age vs. actual age, here).
But, in general, the following guideline from Stanford Medical Children's Health explains how many hours of sleep your babies need and a breakdown of what those hours might look like for daytime sleep sessions and overnight sleep sessions.
- Newborn Newborns need a total of about 16 hours of sleep. That could look like a total of eight hours of sleep (in many smaller chunks) during the day and about eight or nine hours of sleep overnight (also broken up into smaller sessions).
- One Month Old At one month old, your babies need about 15.5 hours of sleep in total, with seven of those hours taking place during daytime hours and about eight or nine hours during the night (again, broken into various segments of sleep).
- Three Months Old At three months old, babies need approximately 15 hours of sleep in all, with four or five hours taking place during the daytime and nine or 10 hours happening during the overnight.
- Six Months Old At six months old, babies need about 14 hours of sleep in a 24-hour period. Four of those hours will happen during the daytime and 10 will take place during nighttime.
- Nine Months Old At nine months old, your babies still need 14 hours of total sleep on any given day. Three of those hours will occur during daytime nap sessions and 11 of those hours will happen overnight.
- 12 Months Old At one year old, your babies still require 14 hours of sleep throughout a 24-hour period, and like the previous point, three of those hours will happen during the daytime and 11 will happen during the nighttime.
- 18 Months Old At one-and-a-half years old, your babies need about 13.5 hours of sleep throughout the day. About two-and-a-half hours will be logged during daytime naps (most toddlers have dropped to just one nap by this age) and 11 hours will be clocked during the overnight sleep session.
- 24 Months Old At two years old, your babies need about 13 hours of sleep in a 24-hour period. About two of those hours will take place during a nap (ideally, for those who haven't dropped their daytime naps yet), and 11 hours will take place during their nighttime snooze session.
The quest for comfort
If your twins are your first babies, you'll soon discover they're often on a quest for comfort, whether they're awake or asleep.
Until your newborns are closer to nine months old (or even up to 12 months old), they cannot fully adapt and regulate their body temperature to external conditions. This means that babies are totally reliant on their parents to monitor and adjust their environment to ensure they are comfortable.
Sleep sacks help your baby regulate their temperature and sleep safely because they do not restrict the arms. Because they are pouch-like, they give your baby the freedom to move as needed, which promotes healthy hip development, and allow them to sleep comfortably.
Over the first many months with our twins, we had three different kinds of sleep sacks before we introduced blankets at bedtime. Before we transitioned to sleep sacks, we used velcro swaddling blankets by Ingenuity.
With sleep sacks, we began with Halo sleep sacks rated for their age and weight, and they were soft and cute and did a good job.
They have a little fabric pocket to tuck over the zipper pull, so that inquisitive minds can't chomp down on the teeth of the zipper with the teeth that are erupting through their sensitive, little gums.
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HALO Sleep Sack with a TOG Value of 0.5
This is Halo's 0.5 TOG sleep sack. The wearable blanket is cotton and has a zipper that opens from the bottom for easier diaper changes.
Then, we ended up using the Nested Bean Zen weighted sleep sacks as our go-to choice every night because the small weight on the chest of the sleep sack, which mimics the sensation and comfort of a parent's hand gently resting on their chest, helped prevent their startle reflex from waking them up throughout the night.
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Nested Bean Zen Weighted Sleep Sack
This is the Nested Bean Zen weighted sleep sack. It's designed to help prevent wake-ups during sleep regressions and help your baby learn to self-soothe.
Once our twins outgrew the Nested Bean Zen Sleep Sack, the Baby Beekeeper Infant Wearable Blanket by Burt's Bees became a staple. It's rated for 12-18 months (22 to 28 pounds; our twins were still wearing them at 24 months' old because they were still under the maximum weight threshold.
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Burt's Bees Baby Beekeeper Infant Wearable Blanket
This is the Burt's Bees Baby Beekeeper Infant Wearable Blanket. The interior zipper guard and zipper pull cover help prevent your baby from pulling at or trying to chew the zipper when they get bored.
Above all else, you want to make sure your babies are comfortable and safe, especially during their naps and overnight sleep sessions.
Help encourage that sleepy feeling
As the utterly exhausted parents of newborns you may be, try to keep one eye open for the telltale signs your little ones are getting ready to sleep, like rubbing their eyes, those slow, deep yawns that make you want to yawn yourself into oblivion, looking away and not making eye contact with you, or starting to fuss when all of their needs have been met.
Catching these small but significant signs before it's too late (read: they get overtired and totally cranky) can help you get your babies down and settled in for a successful sleep session, which means YOU can settle in for a well-deserved snooze, too.
How exhausted were you as parents during the newborn stage with your twin babies? Did your twins' sleep schedules line up, or did they tend to drift off at different times? What did you do to get them back on the same schedule? Let us know in the Comments section below.
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