Evenings and nights

One of the most common questions I still get is if we get any sleep.

One way to answer is to explain how an evening and a night may be.

Our small ones usually eat every three to four hours or so in the daytime. But after dark this accelerates. Around the time the rest of the family eat dinner two hour intervals is normal, when it is bedtime for the older kids the babies want milk almost every hour. So eating is then almost something constant - someone is eating all the time from 8 PM or so...

From 10 PM one after the other MAY fall asleep for the night, but it is hard to predict who will do so first and especially when. Elin is manny nights the last one to fall asleep and that is often way past 11 PM.

A key to get a long nights sleep is to be ready to go to bed whenever the last child is fast asleep. Preparing 6-9 bottles of baby milk, taking care of dishes and tidy up some takes a while - so we must squeeze that in between al diaper changes and feeding. With some luck we can go to bed at midnight.

All babies are capable of sleeping through the night without waking up and demanding food. But lately they haven't done so simultaneously though... So with a short break for 15-20 minutes we usually can sleep until 7-ish. And we may be dozing on and off until 9 at weekends. :) (The pre-prepped bottles is a must to keep everybody happy this long!)

Unfortunately my alarm goes off at 6 AM if it is a workday... But I find six hours of sleep sufficient before going to work.