Baby Bondage (aka The Swaddle)

If you have a baby (or a child that was once a baby), chances are you have a few of these hangin' around your house: the all important swaddle. Helping babies (and parents) sleep for the last millennia. Or, however long woven fabric has been around. A really long time, ok?

One of the first things that you hear about when you are registering for baby gear are swaddles. I know I heard dozens of people tell me about the wonders of swaddling. Heck, one of the 5 "S's" (Happiest Baby on the Block) is devoted to swaddling. It was the first thing we had the nurse teach us how to do once Miss Kaitlin arrived. Doctors actually recommend that you swaddle newborns for the first few months of their lives to help them sleep as it reduces the chance that they will wake themselves up accidentally (newborns have a huge startle reflex - twitching, jumping and scaring themselves for no reason other than the fact that they are in a big wide world now and not comfy cozy in their moms tummy).

Kaitlin has always been a mover and a shaker - especially with her arms. From the beginning we knew we were going to have to swaddle her for a while since not only did she startle herself a lot, she also liked to have her hands by her face which distracted her from going to sleep. We knew how to swaddle her, thanks to the nurses who gave us lessons, but no matter how tightly we swaddled her she always broke free. Sometimes it took her a couple minutes, sometimes an hour, sometime we wouldn't find her arms out until morning, but as sure as the sky is blue her arms were getting out of that swaddle.

nice tight swaddle thanks to the nurses

We started calling her Houdini because no matter how tightly we swaddled her or what type of swaddle we used those arms would always make it out. Sometimes it caused a problem - she woke herself up in the middle of the night or a nap - sometimes it didn't. Some babies love to be swaddled and will wear them for many, many months (provided they aren't rolling over in them) and some babies can sleep fine without them after the first few weeks.

After those first few days at home and her breaking out of every swaddle we put her in (using the swaddle blankets) we decided it was time to break out the big guns. The velcro swaddlers. These are the real deal, and basically like Swaddles for Dummies (the inside of one even has picture instructions, it doesn't get easier than that). Not only does it help if you don't know how to swaddle properly but it also gives a much tighter hold, making it even harder for babies to break out. The first time we put her in a velcro swaddle I kind of felt bad. I felt like I was putting my newborn child in a straight jacket. And then she broke out of it by the time she woke up for her middle of the night feeding and I didn't feel so bad anymore, clearly she was a woman on a mission.

freedom!

We've tried a few different types and brands of swaddles - here are the ones I love the most:

aden + anais

These guys famous for their swaddles and are massively popular due to their swaddle blankets loose weave. They are lightweight and very breathable, which was important for us during this Texas summer. They are extra big, which makes it easier for newbie parents who aren't as well versed in swaddling as delivery room nurses. We don't really use these for swaddling very much any more since there is a 99.99% chance that Kaitlin is going to break out of them. Sometimes I use them for her naps, but thats about it. However these blankets are useful for a ton of other things! I use it as a blanket for when we go into air conditioned stores. I use it as a cover for her stroller/car seat to block out the sun and the outside world. I wrap her up in it when sitting her in the boppy so she doesn't slip down. I've used it as a burp cloth, a nursing cover and during one unfortunate accident on a recent plane ride back to Houston, as a diaper. I have a set of the classic muslin and the bamboo (which are ultra silky and soft...think I can use it as a scarf for me??). They are a must have for any new parent.

HALO SleepSack Swaddle

This was the first velcro swaddle we used on Kaitlin, and man do we love it. It is a sleep sack and a swaddle so you can use it in a variety of ways (swaddle arms in, swaddle arms out, swaddle one in and one out - you get the point). It also has a reverse zip closure which makes changing diapers once they are wrapped up easy as pie. Brian called this her baby burrito since she was wrapped up so snug and tight in this thing, just like a burrito! I am convinced that this swaddle helped her sleep so long at night so early. We have a few of these in 100% cotton (again, Houston summer) but they also make them in fleece for those of you with winter babies in cold climates.

Summer Infant SwaddleMe

About a month ago Kaitlin started to outgrow her HALO SleepSack and I was desperate for a replacement. Even though we use the 100% cotton HALO I was still concerned that it was a bit too thick and that she would over heat in it. I found the Summer Infant SwaddleMe collection at my local Right Start and decided to try them out. Brian wasn't a big fan of them but I liked them. They are made out of light jersey fabric and are very stretchy. They conformed to Kaitlin a little tighter but she could still stretch around in them. They are now getting a bit too small on her so I think we will be going back to the HALO, but I thought these were an excellent option.

Recently I had the thought that it might be a good time to start transitioning Kaitlin away from the swaddle. She is trying to roll over now and when she's in the swaddle it's that much easier for her. When we use the swaddle blankets chances are they come undone to some extent and I didn't like the idea of a loose blanket in the crib with her, especially if she starts to roll over. And then she discovered her hands. Like, really discovered them. Like, looks like she's tripping on acid discovered them. And that just caused more problems. I can see a big difference in the length and quality of sleep she gets when she's swaddled nice and tight, and I'm not ready to let that go yet. She fights the swaddle a lot more now when I'm wrapping her up, but after a few minutes she normally calms back down (except for this last week when, for a couple days, she was pushing furiously against the swaddle grunting really loudly).

(What a weird kid)

Book Review - On Becoming Babywise

This was the first, and for a while the only, sleep book that I read. An old friend had had great success with it when her little girl was born several years ago. I had heard a lot of other success stories from this sleep method as well so I gave it a good read while I was still pregnant and decided that it sounded like a great plan. I had no idea that sleep was going to be such a big issue once my baby was born and that it might be helpful to have a few different sleep books at my disposal.

The premise of the Babywise sleep plan is to set up a eat/play/sleep pattern to babys day (parent-directed feeding or PDF), rather than an on-demand schedule. Each cycle should occur every 2.5-3 hours for a newborn and 3-4 hours as the baby gets older, depending on how often your baby needs to eat. Your baby should eat as soon as she wakes up (from night time sleep and/or naps), then she should spend some time playing (length of time depends on babys age and tolerance for stiulation) and then go down for a nap. Based on this pattern a regular routine will naturally develop and you can plan out your days accordingly. Overtime, on this method, the middle of the night, late evening and early AM feedings would naturally go away as the baby got older. 

The book stresses having flexibility within the schedule/routine, especially during the first few weeks when the mothers supply needs to be properly developed and established and during growth spurts when your baby may need to eat more often. The book explains that by following a PDF plan you are making the baby a part of your family, instead of letting the baby rule your family. This sounded right up my alley.

Babywise also supports putting your baby to sleep while they are awake (but ready to sleep), which I have since found in a few other sleep books). It also mentions that you should learn your babies cry - ie how long they will cry for and what the cry sounds like when they are tired - more or less suggesting that you should let them cry it out (or CIT) until they fall asleep. I tried that a couple times but couldn't bear to hear her scream and cry for longer than 15 minutes (especially when she was still only a few weeks old), so I guess I never really "learned" her cry. Our pediatrician doesn't recommend using the CIT method until 3 or 4 months, so I had a hard time adapting this "rule". The book also discourages the use of a pacifier, rocking and nursing your baby to sleep (creating a "crutch" for the baby to lean on rather than learn how to put themselves to sleep). I didn't use a pacifier for the first two weeks and they were by far the worst of the worst. As soon as I started using a pacifier with Kaitlin our lives got a little bit easier. She still hasn't quite figured out how to self soothe but she's getting there (one of these days I swear her whole fist is going to end up inside of her mouth).

Overall I liked the method of Babywise but in our reality it wasn't as simple following one method in order to get Kaitlin to sleep. We followed this pattern for a long time, and most days still do. The problem I had with Babywise was that I couldn't get Kaitlin down for her naps. When she didn't take a nap, our routine got messed up, and she got even crankier. In the end I couldn't really find any tangible solutions in the book to help with our specific problems, which lead me to seek out other books.

Kaitlins night time sleep has always been pretty good. Her middle of the night feedings fell away pretty fast and she was sleeping 7-8 hours at a stretch regularly by her two month check up (though as I type this she has begun waking up twice a night, oy vey). Maybe this is because we were following the Babywise routine during the day,  or maybe she is just a good night time sleeper. But my problem was getting her daytime naps down and unfortunately that is not something that Babywise really covered. 

Since so many other people have had great success with Babywise and I do really like the eat/play/sleep routine,  I am still inclined to recommend it. This book is heavily criticized for reasons I won't go into here (if you're interested google Becoming Babywise and you'll see a lot of negative responses). As always though you will need to decide what is right for your baby and your family.

You can buy On Becoming Babywise by Gary Ezzo and Robert Bucknam here.

Watch Me Grow - Twelve Weeks

Can we say growth spurt?!

I want to go back on vacation. 

She was a rockstar during vacation. She slept well, she traveled well, she was charming and lovable. The week between 11 and 12 was rough - for everyone. I'm hoping she's going through a growth spurt and this is a temporary change. Her eating has been all off - sometimes she eats every two hours other times she goes four hours between meals (mostly due to sleeping). For the most part she has been waking up twice a night, which she hasn't done in at least a month. She is constantly trying to eat her hands and always has her hands up by her face, which further delays her naps and falling asleep at night. She wants to be held all the time, which is so not typical for her (before she used to cry if she was held too much, now she cries whenever you put her down). She hates being in the swing and has a new eye for watching tv - not good!

Basically as soon as I thought her figured out she up and changed everything. She's really unpredictable right now in almost every way - eating, sleeping, mood, etc.

Such is life with a newborn though, right? Just as you get a little cocky and think you have it all figured out your world turns upside down and you have to start from scratch :)

She is definitely getting bigger though. I can barely lay her down on my lap like I used to without her trying to roll off or pushing her legs against me and launching herself off. Her torso and head now fit where her whole body used to! 

She held a rattle for the first time this week for a couple minutes. She didn't really know what it was for or what it was doing but it caught her attention when it was making noise. I also put her in the jumperoo for the first time! Her little legs don't reach the floor yet (we put some books under her so her feet touch something) but I think she liked it! We have the Fisher Price Rainforest Jumperoo which is kind of a head trip for even Brian and I (seriously, could there BE more stuff on this thing?!) so I don't leave her in there for too long, but she really likes being straight up and able to stretch her legs. Are we going to have an early walker?!

The Art of Napping (part 2)

Before I start I wanted to clear Kaitlins name a little bit. I have reread some of my posts about her naps and I think I kind of made her sound like a nightmare. Oops. She really is a great baby - sure she has her off days but don't we all? In the grand scheme of things, and compared to other babies, she doesn't really cry that much. And more than half of the time when she is crying it's because I am doing something wrong. Or not fast enough. And that's ok. I'm still learning too. A lot of it also has to do with my inexperience as a mom...and sometimes I tend to be a bit dramatic *sheepish grin* So hopefully you don't think that she is a devil baby, she really is sweet :)

Well, it's been almost six weeks since I wrote my first post about napping and I thought it was time for a follow up. I got some amazing feedback from that post - friends and family offered their tips and tricks to try and get Kaitlin to take a nap. And when they didn't have any advise to offer many of them just gave me some words of encouragement (and a few told me to just relax) - which helped just as much.

i love her "sleeping in the car" face

Pretty much the day after I wrote that post I ordered two more sleep books (in addition to "Becoming Baby Wise" which I already had). These books were a tremendous help (I'll go into more detail for each one later). I had tried a couple more "sleep routines" each of which failed. In the end what I decided to do was relax. Kaitlin was getting bigger and older and was able to handle longer periods of awakeness (is that a word?) without loosing her shit. Also, I became better at reading her subtle cues that she was getting tired. And probably the most important (yet sometimes the hardest) was that I started to let Kaitlin fall asleep on her own.

Now, we still don't have napping down to a science, but boy has it improved. I still can't get her into a perfect rhythm of napping (ie, every nap is one hour long and she takes them exactly two hours after being awake) so our days are a little unpredictable but overall we are in a much better place. I have decided to let her nap wherever she can (sometimes that's on my chest, sometimes that's in the swing but most times it's in her crib). I also stopped waking her up to eat. She was gaining lots of weight and around the 7.5 week mark I decided to just let the girl sleep even if it was "time" for her to eat. She should be moving towards 3-4 hours in between feeds anyway, so I didn't feel like she was going hungry. Trust me, when she's hungry she will let you know. 

her favorite sleeping position

The other biggest change that I made was to let Kaitlin put herself to sleep. I read it in both new books that I got and countless places online. Now that I knew some more tired cues (who knew that putting her first in her mouth might actually mean that she was tired??) I could now put her down when she started showing me those signs rather than when she was already crying. More often than not she manages to put herself to sleep within a few minutes. Although as I type this she is upstairs squirming around in her crib 30 minutes after I initially put her down (and she was half asleep). Oh well, you win some and you loose some. I only go up and check on her when she is crying. Little whimpers and babbling don't count. Once, while we were on vacation, I put her down to nap and she wasn't even that sleepy. I think she yawned once or twice and I decided to put her in her travel crib awake to see what would happen. It took about ten minutes but she put herself to sleep! Brian and I were doing a happy dance in the living room. It hasn't happened since then, but at least I know it's possible. And sometimes when she is overtired and needs extra consoling I will stay in her room until she is almost completely asleep. But I have found that sometimes my being in the room right next to her keeps her awake rather than puts her to sleep.

The biggest challenge for me is being able to accurately read her tired cues and act on them when I see them. We have figured out that she "talks" a lot more when she is tired. Her talking slowly turns into whining and finally it turns into crying. So, in theory, I should start to put her to bed when she starts talking a lot. But it's just so fun! It is awesome hearing her babble back to me and engage in a "conversation". But sometimes I take it too far and before I know it she's crying. It's not long after that that she gets overtired and the cries are harder to console. And things like sneezing - apparently sneezing can mean that a baby is getting overstimulated and is tired. But, it can also mean that she has something in her nose. What to do?? Put her to bed the minute she sneezes? That's when I need to just relax and try not to over analyze things.

not sleeping when she is supposed to be...good thing Dad got in a nap though!

I've been more successful at hitting that "sweet spot" of tiredness and getting her to nap just at the right time, but it has been far from perfect. Being on vacation for a couple of weeks really pushed me, and her, to see how far we had come. And it turns out we have come pretty far. She was a stellar napper while we were away - sometimes she did a much better job than she normally does while at home! I'm trying to take some of those lessons I learned while on vacation and apply them here now that we are back. 

I have cherry picked some of the best tips from several sleep books to what works the best for us on that particular day. I wish it were as easy as following one method from one book, but unfortunately that isn't the case for us. I wanted so badly to have a perfect routine and be able to plan out our days. I love predictability and a routine and unfortunately we just aren't there yet. But slowly I am starting to learn that that's OK. She will be just fine and so will I. As long as I get a nap sometimes too :)

The sleep books that I have read and found really useful are:

"The Babysense Secret" by Megan Faure

"Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" by Marc Weissbluth

"On Becoming Baby Wise" by Gary Ezzo and Robery Bucknam

I will be writing a separate book review post on each, check back for more details!

Watch Me Grow - Eleven Weeks

Better late than never - right? Holy moly she's getting so big!!

We are finally back from our summer vacation and man is it good to be home! Kaitlin did a STELLAR job on her first big vacation. She rocked a six hour drive from Syracuse to Long Island (and slept half the way!) and was such a superstar during our flight back to Houston (again - she slept half the way).

We really pushed her to the limit during our last few days of vacation - naps were cut short or missed and a couple times she went to bed a lot later than she usually does. But she took it all with stride and generally did a great job considering the circumstances. The only time she was cranky about it was during our last big party on Saturday, but honestly I think a lot of that was because of the heat.

As great of a job as she did I am happy to get back to our normal "routine" and get those naps and night time sleeps back to normal. Although as I type this she is going through a big growth spurt (at least that's what I hope it is!) so things will probably be off for a few more days.

We had a such great time seeing our friends and family - thank you to everyone who made the trip out to see us and meet Kaitlin!

Watch Me Grow - Ten Weeks

As I mentioned last week there won't be a lamb mat photo this week since we are still on vacation. But I have a few super cute shots to make up for it! We are learning that Kaitlin is a little social butterfly. We always knew she was super alert and drinks in everything that is going on around here. And now that she has met a million friends and family members (with many more to come this week!) she loves to be around people. She is super social and behaves incredibly well around a lot of people. My parents had a party on her 10 Week birthday and she was a superstar. She had lots of people in her face and she totally handled it in stride. I was even able to get her down for two naps and she slept 8 hrs in a row that night - which means that she isn't getting as overstimulated as she used to!

Other big developments this week - she discovered her hands and feet and went for her first long car ride. She rocked the car ride (all 5.5 hrs of it), only crying when it was time to eat or be changed. I'm feeling so much more confident about taking her out in the car by myself now without a meltdown! And she has put rolling over on hold now that she has discovered her hands and feet. She's noticing her hands a lot more than her feet since they are closer to her eyes, but when she is sitting up she can't stop staring at her feet. Her hands are constantly in front of her face/eyes/mouth and she just stares and stares at them (sometimes all cross eyed if they are too close to her, which is pretty hilarious). She has been "talking" a ton to grandma and grandpa (and she LOVES talking to her daddy).

So far I'd say she's having a pretty good vacation!

"talking" to daddy

Watch Me Grow - Nine Weeks

Unfortunately I don't have a photo of Kaitlin on her lamb mat this week - or next week for that matter. We are on vacation and the lamb mat didn't make the cut, I had enough stuff in my suitcase as it was! Man, packing for traveling with a baby is tough! It's a good thing she's so small right now and hardly needs any toys to play with, I can't imagine what it's going to be like when she gets older!

Kaitlin went on her first plane ride last on Friday and was a super star. She slept for almost half of it and barely made a peep the rest of the time. She even did awesome in the car ride from the airport to the lake, we lucked out big time!

Last week she also had her two month checkup. She weighs a whopping 10lb 1.6oz and measures 23" long! She's growing fast that's for sure! She had to get three shots for her immunizations and I was super nervous. The last time we had a check up she screamed the entire time, and this time she had to be jabbed with needles?!?! She has been such a good baby lately because she didn't make one peep during the whole check up and when she got her shots she only cried for a few minutes - and I don't blame her!

I may be speaking too soon but I think our "6 week turning point" has finally arrived. Since her 8 week birthday last week she has been amazing. She has been sleeping great (most of the time, she's still a baby after all) and even started to try and roll over all on her own. Naps are going well and she's sleeping really well at night. She has met a ton of people since being on vacation and has handled it all really well. This mom is nothing but smiles lately :)

Here are a few vacation pics of the little one - see you next week!

being a superstar on her first flight!