(Almost) Free from the Bonds of Swaddling

As many of you know, I am addicted to swaddling my child. It started out innocently enough in the Children's Hospital NICU where The Chub Muffin was constantly in a swaddled state. When we brought her home in the dead of winter, her pediatrician strongly recommended keeping her swaddled so she could stay warm. She was so small, that helping her save energy by keeping her warm would help her to grow. At least that was plan. So for months I continued swaddling her for nap time and at night. By the time 3 months rolled around and Spring was around the corner, I realized it might be a good time to break her from the habit. You can read more about our first attempts here. Needless to say, it did not go well. After a few days of trying, I gave up. I could no longer handle watching my baby on the video monitor struggle to fall asleep and cry for an hour. She was just not ready and neither was I.

It took a swaddling intervention to get me to change my ways. One night at a girls night out, The Hubs put her down for the night and "experimented". I love how men can be so much more spontaneous that way. I came home to see my little girl laying peacefully in her crib with her arms up by her head. It made me wonder why we hadn't tried this sooner. Oh yeah, that's right. I value my sleep. Anyway, everything seemed to be going rather smoothly until about 3am when I heard an outburst of crying. It seemed that although she was able to fall asleep like that in a very tired state, she had a harder time transitioning with her arms there to distract her. So for several nights we put her down for bed unswaddled since we knew she was capable of falling asleep initially like that. Then when we fed her at 10, we'd swaddle her for the rest of the night. After a few days, we let her go unswaddled again to see how long she could go. I was prepared to let her cry a little in the middle of the night but go in to reassure her if needed. Finally, she made it from 7:30pm to 6am unswaddled. It seems like a gradual approach is working (but I feel the need to knock on wood right now, or possibly bang on it).

Now, as for naps, those are still a little tricky. Today was my first time experimenting with an unswaddled Chubadub. I have been hesitant to experiment because she already has trouble with naps sometimes anyway, and she often wakes up after 45 min. as it is. I knew the added arm distraction would probably not help these factors. And although I treasure her nap times as some much needed "me" time, I figured this weekend of all weekends while The Hubs is home, would be a good time to test it out. I am happy to say she did actually fall asleep for about 20-30 minutes, but just as I expected, was roused from her sleep and unable to get back to sleep after that which ultimately resulted in some crying and lots of grunting and squealing. There was just too much excitement in the crib (in other words, appendages to play with).

Because the gradual approach seemed to have worked for night time, I think I'll try one nap unswaddled per day for about a week (or less if it goes well) and gradually move to a bondage free nap routine. Wish me luck. This has not been an easy journey.

Also, I am not trying to leave everyone in the dark as far as my child's health is concerned. Basically there is no new information to report. We have not received any tests back yet and her next appointment is in about a week. I will keep you posted as we find out more. In the meantime we have been in touch with the Early Intervention Program. Our coordinator should be calling next week to set up some in-home physical therapy sessions. Free, at-home appointments = one happy momma.

(Thump) 3 times on the ceiling if you want me ...

What is that noise? A 500 lb man doing jumping jacks on the roof? No it's my tiny 10 lb. daughter lifting her legs up and thumping them down over, and over, and over, and over again during nap time.

It took me awhile to figure out what this noise was. A few weeks ago I told the Hubs that I thought there may be a loose shingle on the roof because I kept hearing this thumping noise coming from the ceiling. We just had our roof replaced about 2 years ago because we used to have this problem all the time. Combine a west facing house with a cheap roofing job and it was a recipe for disaster. As time went on and I heard this noise even on calm sunny days, I started freaking out. Was someone on our roof? Was some disgruntled neighbor kid perpetually kicking a soccer ball at our house? Then with a slight adjustment to our video monitor I'd start to see two little feet lifted high that would disappear out of view about the exact same time I heard the noise.

This pretty much eliminates our need for the video monitor we spent $140 on. I can tell by just listening whether she's awake or not. These chubby little thighs mean business.

One of those days ...

Every once in a while Senorita Chub Chubs has a very "off" day. Today is one of those days. It's pretty bad timing considering we have her 4 month check up this afternoon which includes her immunizations. Big bummer.

The Chubs is very schedule oriented, and I think this all began at Children's hospital when they had me on a strict 3 hour feeding routine. The Little Muffin got used to eating every 3 hours which naturally put her in schedule mode and made it easy for us to create a consistent routine. This has been great in some ways, but hard in others. Keeping her on a schedule has made her a very happy baby that is well rested and has a very predictable internal clock... most of the time. It's nice to know when she'll be eating, napping, going to bed and waking up etc, but it is also very limiting especially since she can't stay up more than an hour and 15 minutes before she turns into a pumpkin.

There are however, days (such as this one) where the schedule is just thrown out the window and for one reason or another The Chubs is in a funk. This morning she woke early (about an hour before her ideal wake up time), but then didn't eat nearly as much as she usually does. She seemed overly distracted with her surroundings. There were many head jerks in the direction of the ceiling fan, then more side glances and head turns toward the quilt on the rocker. Add in a dozen smiles and intense thought-provoking stares and you have a recipe for a bad eater.

I put her down for her nap as usual since she was getting fussy and was clearly tired. She whined for a couple minutes (like she usually does) and then passed out (like she usually does). 15 minutes later... not even the usual 45 minute sleep transition disruption, but 15 flippin' minutes later she's wide awake again and then proceeds to fuss for 45 minutes. I let her go this long because she almost always falls back asleep again, but this time she didn't. So I went up to feed her, and it turns out her fussing was more of a social call. She smiled at me brightly as I entered the room. I picked her up (more big smiles) and then tried to feed her again thinking that because of her poor eating this morning, she would be hungry again. NOPE! She continued to smile, look around, suck half-heartedly and shoot a load in her diaper (a pretty large one, I might add).

We're about to head to the doctor in 30 minutes with a tired baby that is just too interested in the world around her to get some shut-eye or eat a decent meal.

Over-tired child + Poor Eater + Immunizations (will surely) = A very long day for mom.

Out of Control

Up until this point, I have been swaddling Senorita Chub Chubs for both night time and nap time. Lately I have been worried that swaddling her so much, since she sleeps so much during the day, may be delaying her development. I don't have any proof of this and it's not like she isn't already growing like a normal baby, but we all know how much I enjoy worrying. And when we purchased our miracle blanket (which I love, by the way) it mentioned not swaddling her for more than 10 hours a day. Considering she sleeps about 19 hours a day, I figured we should probably start to try to transition her out of the swaddle for nap times. Once we can get that down, we can eventually stop swaddling her at night.

We originally purchased the Miracle Blanket for several reasons. One being this:


She also was starting to break her arms free on a regular basis and that in itself would wake her up. We'd look at the video monitor at night and there would just be a giant hand in the camera waving around. One day during a nap she got her arms free and I just saw her waving them around with a huge smile on her face. I could almost here her singing "Freedom" by George Michael.

As I type this, I am experimenting with her afternoon nap to see how this will actually play out. The problem is that she still is mesmerized by her arms and hands. She moves them around and watches them fly all over the place without really having much control of where they're going. She'll be drifting off to sleep but then catch a glimpse of her arm flying through the air and all of a sudden she's thinking "Oh wow, what is that cool thing that just flew past me? Look out, it's headed straight toward my eye!"And then it's all over. She startles herself awake again and then the process starts all over again. Lately she's found her hair and her ear, both of which she likes to pull on and then make herself cry because, "Ouch, that hurts! Who the heck is doing that to me?"

So far this nap is not going well. She's extremely tired and keeps almost falling asleep and then waking herself up again. And then she flails her arms around like a crazy person and starts crying because she feels (and looks) so out of control. Another thing she does is look straight at the camera several times like she's trying to say "HELLO! I'm not sleeping in here, come and get me up already! You guys are so lame."

If anyone has any advice for me on how to transition this little Chub Muffin, I welcome it with open, flailing, chubby baby arms.