I've been meaning to write an updated version of our "day in the life" post for weeks now and just haven't managed to get started. By the time you finish reading this post I think you'll understand why. Here's an average day these days: (we've essentially been on the same schedule since two and a half or three months)
7ish- Wake up & eat (most days Isaiah is our alarm clock). We each nurse one baby in our room while, hopefully, baby #3 is still sleeping. Feedings are generally taking about 20-25 min most times. We keep hearing this shoud be getting faster & it is, but not as quickly as we'd like. They are sometimes finishing in 15 minutes though. Hopefully that is a trend!
7:30- Michelle feeds #3 & I change stinky overnight diapers, most often poopy. All babies get Zantac for reflux.
7:45-Playtime-Usually in the activity gym in our bedroom (Some days this is about when I leave for a work visit, leaving Michelle to get everyone down). Baby 3 gets changed.
8:30ish- Babies 1 & 2 start getting sleepy and get put down for a nap. Nap time routine is a song or two and then down in their cribs. (Some days they're back down as early as 8/8:15 if they seem really sleepy). If we're both home one of us might get a shower while there's only one baby awake or go make breakfast.
9ish-Baby #3 goes down & moms eat breakfast if we haven't already squeezed it in cuz we were starving. Usually enough time to get dressed, brush teeth, etc too.
9:30-Babies 1 & 2 wake up and eat...feeding party has moved to the living room now.
10-Two diapers & playtime in activity gym, bumbo, tummy time, etc. Baby 3 up to eat (This is another time I might head out for work visit & be back by 12 or after baby 3 eats I send Michelle to the bedroom to do homework while I handle the babies.)
10:30-Diaper time for baby #3 who then joins playtime in the living room.
11ish-Babies 1 & 2 go down There's always about a 15 min leeway on either side for naps that vary between 45 min to a little over an hour. So if they seem like they're getting sleepy earlier, down they go. If one baby wakes up early, lately they've been content to have some quiet time in the swing until baby 2 wakes up to eat..usually no more than ~15 min.
11:15/30- Baby 3 down for nap & moms get laundry moving, eat lunch, or maybe Michelle tries to do a quick homework task or make a meal plan. (Note the OR in the above statement! There's typically time for one task...especially when one of the first two down wakes up early or baby #3 has a hard time going down.)
12- Babies up to eat (As before baby 3 is 15-30 behind 1 & 2)
Repeat feeding-diaper-playtime-nap cycles with feedings around 2:30 & 5. Difference being that as the day progresses naps get harder and less consistent, often needing more intervention to get them to sleep, which means we get less done.
7:30-Start bedtime routine. For this cycle we do diaper changes first, getting them in their overnight diapers. Then we swaddle them, nurse them, read a couple books, sing our goodnight version of Frere Jaques and lay them in their crib, drowsy but awake. Typically, they all go down pretty easily with minimal fighting. If they do fight it, we set a 5min timer before going in to soothe. That's usually all it takes before they are off to dreamland. This is the longest stretch of sleep, typically from about 8:30/9 to between 1 & 2. Some nights we have an early wake up but they usually soothe themselves back to sleep. On really lucky nights they might sleep until 2:30.
9-9:30-We get ourselves ready for bed, prep nighttime snacks, and pump right before bed. We are typically in bed by 9:15/9:30.
1 or 2a.m.-First night feeding. These night feedings are all business. Everyone stays swaddled, eats in the dark in our bedroom, and right back down. Usually no problems going back down though a few times lately Avery has gotten upset when we lay her back down. We do a quick pump after this feeding too because even though it means less sleep, it's a lot easier to pump at night than it is during the day now. The babies are just too busy for us to pump during the day now. Hopefully our milk supplies will keep up. So far so good. Our snack for this feeding is almost always an apple cut into thin slices.
4/5a.m.- 2nd night feeding. Same as the first only we don't pump after this one since by the time they're all back in bed we usually only have an hour or two left to sleep. Some days, like when I have an 8am visit or Michelle is feeling particularly stressed about school we just stay up after this feeding. It's a hard choice to make, but we usually get a lot done when we do it. As you can see from the schedule above, the longest window we have to accomplish any task is about 30 minutes and if we stay up after this feeding we might have almost 90 minutes of continuous time to work, which feels like an eternity. But, when we do stay up, we've generally gotten about 6 hours of sleep so we can't do this all the time or we get worn down.
And then we start it all over again around 7a.m.! We keep waiting for their cycles to stretch out a bit, but they're just not ready yet, I guess. They are pretty good at letting us know when they need to sleep and are very clear about when they need to eat!!
And that's our life these days! Whew, anyone else feel tired just reading this?!
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| Lots of sleepy babies |
