(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.

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.