I am a new woman!

Sandy here:

The babies pretty routinely nurse about every 3 hours (sometimes shorter during the day--you know, they get bored like we all do and decide "might as well eat!"). Sometimes we can get random 4 hour stretches between feedings--but it has not happened regularly. Given that each feeding takes close to an hour, that means if I am really focused I can get a maximum of 3 hours sleep in one stretch (of course, no matter how tired I am, I can't "sleep" on command, so the full 3 hours rarely happens). Also, I have learned to "do the math" every time I wake up to figure out how long it has been between feedings (and how much sleep I got). The girls are also suffering through their second round of colds (they're not so good at blowing their noses yet, but I keep trying!), so getting them to sleep for long chunks of time has been challenging.

All this is background information for the other night when, about an hour after their last feeding (at 11:30 p.m.) Tava started crying. I went in to help her out (with this cold she sometimes needs to sleep upright, but has decided the swing and jiggly chair are evil at night and won't sleep in them), and shortly thereafter Analee started crying as well. I hauled both of them on the futon couch with me and we all went to sleep. I woke up at about 4:30 a.m. and my thoughts, in this order, were:

1. These clocks can't be right
2. I must not know how to "do the math"
3. Doug must have snuck in, taken them away, given them a bottle, and replaced them on the futon with me.

They slept until 5 a.m.-- 5.5 hours between feedings. It may not happen again until they go to college, but there is now a light at the end of the sleep tunnel.