Zone or Man on Man

[tbeards]

I am borrowing this post from another website (twinstuff) to see what y'all think. I go back to work on Monday : ( so we are talking about what we should do... Any ideas??? I am thinking the man on man would work out best for us...

"For you moms of first years (and other moms who lurk), is/was it easier for you to do a zone defense where you took a certain shift and DH took another or did you do a man to man where each of you was in charge of a twin? I am asking this specifically about night feedings since those seem to be harder. I plan on nursing but DH will do middle of the night feedings with a bottle so that I can get some sleep. With our son, I took the 7pm to 2am shift(my son usually woke around midnight), he got anything between 2am and 6am (usually a 4am waking then he went off to work). When my son was just waking 1x at night, we alternated whose night it was to wake up with him. Is it harder if just one parent gets up in the middle of the night, do you need both up?"

~Trudi

[kindergal]

My dh and I took shifts.  When one woke up, we would wake up the other one to feed him/her.  I did not find it hard to feed both at the same time.  My husband would somehow rig up the boppy pillow and prop one on it and put the other in his lap and feed them both at the same time.  At first, we both would get up and then found neither of us ever got good sleep so taking turns was best for us.   Fortunately, at 3.5 months mine started sleeping through the night.  Yippeee!!!!!  

[tbeards]

I am thinking the same about the Man to Man (M2M). My dh gets a little overwhelmed with both of them right now especially when he is feeding one and then the other one cries. I am like you, I would get out of bed anyway.

I am interested to hear more views on this. Last night right after I fed Jamie, Kendall woke up and I fed her so that worked out just fine, BUT, they normally don't do that. They normally wake up about an hour apart now. I am trying to see how they will handle sleeping at night on their own without waking them up so an hour in between is hard to do with the zone process. Kendall actually slept through the night two nights ago but that was a freak occurrence I think : ) Both babies are only waking up once per night. They go to bed around 10:00 p.m. and wake up between 2 and 3:30 or so and then back up at 6:30 a.m. That means we only need to get up once per night if we do M2M and then only for about 1/2 hour by the time we change the diaper, feed and then rock back to sleep...

[Kat_624]

Man to Man worked best for us.

We tried zone on occasion, but it always backfired.  I never really felt like DH could handle both on his own.  I mean, I'm sure he could, but anytime I heard two babies crying, I had to get out of bed...I just couldn't help myself!!

Like you, we had a toddler as well, so that made it more challenging.  DH was almost exclusively in charge of our older daughter in the mornings. Since I was generally the one who was up more at night, DH was always good about tending to our toddler when she woke up so I could get an extra 20 min sleep.

Good luck with getting back to work.  The first few weeks will be rough, but I'm sure you'll get into a routine.  I work 4 days a week, and I can tell you, there are days when I feel like I've put a full day in before I even have the kids dropped off at daycare!  :)