What is "normal" night waking?

[onthefly]

It must be extra hard with 2!
In my experience, yes, that is entirely normal. The only way to survive this is to bed-share and get whatever rest you can at other times - calling in any help you possibly can.
Both my kids woke 6+ times a night pretty much every night till they were over 18 months old. But I only had one at a time.

For reference, one-third of 4 year olds wake in the night and need help from a parent to go back to sleep.

[Arcadia]

Sounds normal to me too. Bed sharing and day naps were the only way I survived. I found my babies we through wakeful stages just before crawling and walking and then settled again. Also after I introduced solids.

It will pass, but you need to prioritize your own sleep and have a catchup session every weekend.

[Santosha]

Yup, I had one of those. Not only regular wakings but long stretches awake. I just pulled his cot up against the side of my bed and if he would tolerate wriggling around in there I'd leave him, or I'd pull him out and know he was safe as the cot acting as the bed rail. Could never fully sleep while he was awake but at least managed to doze. I didn't cope with the exhaustion particularly well. But in hindsight I wish I'd just set aside many of the things I thought I 'should' be doing and just tried to rest and hang out with the kids as much as possible through the day instead of cleaning and doing activities and outings. Honestly, it drove me nuts and some nights I got really irate and would huff off for a while and leave DH to manage him. It's so tiring and you're less rational and tolerant at 3am. But I did try to remind myself that DDs sleep issues passed and this would too. And it did... eventually! By 11 months he was still waking but going back to sleep with a cuddle/boob about 95% of the time.

[~TT40~]

*hugs* with 2 it must be hard.
Spock is now 8 months..but was 7 months when we had that few weeks from hell where she would wake every hour and sometimes not settle for a couple of hours. she has gotten better, now i get 3 nights of 3-4 hr stretches with majority of the wake ups just needing a quick cuddle or some boob and she settles, to 1 night of hell.
maybe it is an age thing? I dont know, I still don't know what caused it for her, and what is still making her so restless at night. we tried a lot of different things, and none of them made an obvious difference...
so no real advice. but that it could be normal, and even if it is it WILL pass.
*hugs*