Author: Donna Moala

Will your multiples and twins get enough sleep at daycare????  One of the biggest stresses about putting your precious multiples into daycare is wondering if they will sleep or not! Donna Moala from Bub2Sleep, shares her top tips to ensure they do.

Looking for a daycare? Questions to ask to ensure your multiples and twins get enough sleep at daycare

As all multiple birth parents know, sleep is essential, not only for the babies growth and development, but for the parents sanity!! The last thing you need is your multiples coming home from daycare tired and exhausted because they have not slept.

When looking for a daycare, you need to ask the centre how they actually get babies to fall asleep. Some centres are great and they will do whatever you ask them to do. This is should be the way it is. But this doesn’t always happen. You are the parent. You are paying a lot of money. They should do what you ask them to do and they should be adhering to age appropriate sleep needs.

You need to be very clear.  Say, “I always put my babies down, awake, and they fall asleep on their own. All they need is a dark, quiet environment, and a cot of their own and they will sleep well,” why wouldn’t they want that? That makes their job much easier. But some daycare’s, for some reason, have certain policies in place where they do not do that. They might wrap the babies or rock them to sleep.  Some centres put them in a pram until they fall asleep and then transfer them.

So ensure you ask about getting babies to sleep in the first place. If it’s the total opposite of what you have worked really hard to create at home, and they refuse to change their routines then you need to keep looking for another suitable daycare.

Are your babies are already in daycare and not sleeping well during the day?

If your babies are already at a day care and not sleeping well, then you need to find out why. Don’t just bury your head in the sand around day-care and hope for the best. Find out what they do around naptime. Are things scheduled? Do they have a quiet place to sleep? Is it dark? Or is it just, “Oh, if they fall asleep in the pram, then great,” and just go on like that? You really need to investigate a little bit and find out if the situation is conducive to what you have created at home. Once you know what they are doing then it’s easier to make suggestions to the educators about what you need them to ensure your multiples and twins get enough sleep at daycare

Remember, some babies just prefer their own beds!

Some babies just don’t sleep as well when they are out or at daycare. None of us do, really. We all sleep better in our own beds, so it makes sense that it is the same for your babies. If the daycare is doing what you ask and they have tried really hard, but your babies are still not sleeping well, then just put your grumpy babies down early for the night. This could be as early as 5.45pm. There is no reason why you need to live with grumpy, tired babies, just to hang on to a magical bed time. Just do your normal bedtime routine, and then put them into bed early.

More than likely they are not going to day-care every day. On the days they are home with you and sleeping great, then it is no problem to revert to your normal bedtime. While in the long run it is important to get the body clock to get in line with a consistent bedtime, there is always wiggle room around that. It’s not set in stone.

Donna Moala is a mother of 3 beautiful girls. She is extremely passionate about saving families sleep and empowering Mums and Dads to regain their own sleep and take back control.

Find out more about Bub2Sleep.

Donna Moala is a mother of 3 beautiful girls. She is extremely passionate about saving families sleep and empowering Mums and Dads to regain their own sleep and take back control.

Find out more about Bub2Sleep.

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