Before I had kids, I used to think that having twins would be so cute and so fun until I had my first son.

He was about two or three weeks old when this little thought came to my head and it actually caused me to gasp in a little bit of horror when I thought, oh my gosh, what if he was a twin? Right, it’s cute, right, when you don’t have kids but once you have them, it could be a really challenging experience.

So I wanna talk a little bit today about how do you sleep train twins? I get asked that question a lot because I mean, it’s harder. You’ve got two babies on your hands.

So the first thing you wanna do is get them on the same schedule. I would encourage you right from day one if you’re just expecting that you get both babies on as close to the same schedule as you possibly can.

The good news is they’re the exact same age so their sleep needs will be very similar. Maybe not absolutely the same but still very similar, similar enough that you can put them on the same schedule.

Now, my rule of thumb around that is 30 minutes. So let’s say twin A and B both go to sleep at the same time. However, twin A wakes up after an hour and twin B is still sleeping. Give twin B 30 extra minutes.

If she sleeps that long, okay. We’ll just open the door now, we’ll make a little bit of noise in the hallway, see if we can naturally rouse her to wake up.

If she sleeps 10, 15 extra minutes and then wakes up, that’s fine too.

So a 30 minute window. 30 minutes doesn’t really do that much to the body clock so I always say that that’s a good little leeway system of giving your baby an extra 30 minutes.

Now, when the next nap rolls around, you can go ahead and put them down at the exact same time again even if twin B had a little bit more sleep. It might just be that twin B actually needs a little bit more sleep than her sister or brother and that’s okay too. So we’re gonna give her that opportunity.

Now, as far as where do we do this as far as sleeping arrangements go, well, any way that you do it will work, okay? If you have to share rooms, that will work. If you have the option to move the babies apart especially while you’re really sleep teaching them, that’s the best scenario, okay?

So even if that meant that one goes into the office for a couple of weeks or even into the spare room for a couple of weeks, that’s going to be a little bit easier and that’s simply because they’re not so close.

If one baby wakes and is doing any kind of crying, there’s less likely a chance that that baby’s gonna wake up the other one.

So that’s just gonna help make it a little easier on mom or dad so that they don’t have to worry so much about one baby waking the other but the bottom line is and this doesn’t matter if we’re talking about twins or siblings or anyone else in the house, if a baby is upset enough, there’s really nowhere to hide, right?

So the chances of at least once or twice having both babies awake at the same time is going to happen and you just need to make peace with that and it’s really okay, right, because we’re teaching them the skills that they need to sleep well which means that eventually this isn’t going to happen anymore because both babies will know how to sleep.

If one wakes up the other, they’ll be capable of getting back to sleep and everything will work out in the end.

Sometimes, we just have to climb those high hills to get to the other side and that would be one of the scenarios.

Now, once both babies are sleeping well, I would give it about two or three weeks of great sleep and then if you want to move them back into the same room, that would be the perfect time for that.

One little tip that I will give you though is separate twins for nap time indefinitely.

So this is easier because you have often spare rooms during the day.

So set up a Pack ‘n Play or an extra crib in your office, even in your bedroom, it doesn’t matter where but a different room for naps so that you can, that both babies have a separate space for nap time just because naps are almost always more challenging.

The sleep that occurs there is a little lighter and a little bit more fragmented so the chances of one baby waking up the other one prematurely is really high. So it just makes life a lot easier if we just say, alright, this little girl always naps in my room in the Pack ‘n Play and this little boy always naps in his crib in his room.

That’s gonna make your life a lot easier.

So good luck. I mean, it’s doable, people do it all the time. So I don’t want you to think that you can’t or you shouldn’t.

You absolutely should and props to you, my hat’s off to you.

I know it’s a little bit more challenging but it’s absolutely doable and the good news is once they’re on the same schedule and sleeping well, it’s gonna make life parenting twins much more easy for you.

Thanks so much for watching today. Sleep well.