Sunday, January 03, 2021

Swaddle thoughts?

 Minnie is a great sleeper, and I really shouldn't complain. BUT WHEN HAS THAT STOPPED ME?

Here's the thing: She needs to be swaddled to sleep. This is OK for naps. She only sleeps 45-90 minutes, and we can easily check on her. When she wakes up, she's pretty vocal about it, so if she were to roll over in her swaddle, I think it would be fine. To be clear, we have never found her on her tummy after a nap, and she typically gets her arms out of the blanket and has her legs wrapped up. She's either on her back or her side-- sometimes facing a different direction, but whatever.

Also, I have no problem with stomach sleeping once a baby can roll herself onto her own stomach. AND she has a Newton mattress with a breathable sheet. You can literally stick your face up to that thing and breathe normally. I do worry, though, about being all wrapped up and rolling over-- would she somehow get her blanket wrapped around her face, etc?

Which brings me to my problem (that really isn't one): NIGHT TIME. So, she wears a footie pajama and a fleece sleep sack. But! In order to fall asleep and stay asleep, she needs to be wrapped in a receiving blanket swaddle over the top of this get up. I don't want to leave her like that when I go to bed, though, because I worry that she will come unwrapped and get into an unsafe situation. And with the sleep sack on, she might not be able to free her legs, blah blah blah. So, I unwrap her, but then she wakes up and it's a whole THING. With the other kids, they would start out in their rooms, and I would bring them in with me at first waking until eventually there were no more wakings. This is what I would like to do with Minnie, but the swaddle is disrupting us. The other night, I tried to not swaddle her, but she kept flailing the whole time she was eating and would not fall asleep-- until I wrapped her up like a baby burrito.

Any thoughts? I would prefer NOT to buy a sleep suit contraption. She is thisclose to rolling from back to tummy on the regular and has done it from time to time, so I don't want to buy something she won't be able to use for very long. Just keep her arms out of the swaddle for a few nights? Go cold turkey for naps? None of the other kids did anything like this, so I have no experience to draw upon.





3 comments:

  1. Averson LOVED a tight swaddle. At times we even double-swaddled her. Two (somewhat disparate) things that helped us were the swaddle blankets with the velcro (I suspect you could replace your sleep sack with this) and then, when she started to outgrow the receiving blankets I worked on swaddling her with one arm out, and then two, and then so on. I liked the velcro blankets because they made it easy to really crank her in and they didn't come loose in the night.

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  2. Swaddle blankets with velcro!! I had a couple kiddos that needed swaddled and this was such an awesome transition from receiving blankets to bigger baby swaddle needs

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  3. Sleep sacks with swaddle! Those are the best. I used them for all three of my girls. And the swaddle part is Velcro so when they outgrow that you can still use the sleep sacks.

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