Maternity leave: I wanted to establish breast-feeding, so I nursed for 1.5 hours, every three hours, and slept in 15-30 minute bursts where I could. The cribs were in our bedroom for easy nighttime access. I’d bring one baby into our bed at a time and doze while they nursed.

Before Iraq: Once I returned to work, my husband and I broke the night into shifts. During his shift, he’d latch them onto my breast without waking me. I know, best husband EVER! We managed on about 4 hours of sleep each per day.

During Iraq: When my husband deployed, the girls were 5 months old. Jessica immediately went on nursing strike. She was still getting expressed breast milk, but she slept for 3 hours at a time, which was GREAT! Melody continued to nurse, and we ended up cosleeping for part of every night. I managed on three and a half hours of sleep, and often used my lunch break at work to take a nap on our office couch.
Sadia´s last blog ..Girly girls

My oldest went in her crib in her own room from the day she came home from the hospital. We got lazier the second time around and went with the whatever works and gets us the most sleep strategy. We split the evening / night up into blocks of 6 hours so whoever’s time it was to sleep got a decent amount of uninterrupted slumber. Whoever was on call with the kid slept downstairs on the couch with the baby in her carrier. She switched to her crib at 3 weeks when she didn’t need to nurse / have a bottle every couple of hours anymore.

I nursed, pumped, and supplemented with formula. We would bring a cooler with ice that we would keep pumped breastmilk and formula for overnight feedings. Luckily, our hot water heater works really well, so we would just make bottles, place them in the hot water to warm up before feeding.

My hubby and I did shifts so we could both get a fair amount of sleep. I took anything before 3am and Hubby took 2am and later.

They were typically eating every 2 hours, so their feedings normally ended up being 1opm, 2am, 6am, etc. If one woke up to eat, they both ate to keep them on the same schedule.

The shifts worked out well and we had a rule if it all went to hell and both babies were screaming, then you could wake up the other person to help. Luckily, our girls were pretty fast eaters, so we would feed one at a time and could usually be back to bed in an hour. I did try to pump anytime that they were up, so my sleep was sporadic, but I had no trouble falling back to sleep in these early days.

Babies were (and still are) all mine until 12-2am (it varies)…husband has them from 2-6. There is no waking of the spouse unless really, really necessary. This way each parent gets at least 5 hrs of uninterrupted sleep. I swear it saved our sanity..those first few months really weren’t that bad!