the almighty swaddle
Monday, June 08, 2009Labels: baby love
Before getting pregnant I had seen babies swaddled before, but I had no idea how amazing swaddling really was or could be. Josh and I read The Happiest Baby on the Block. This book talks about how the first three months of a baby's life is really like a fourth trimester. It's important to comfort them by making them feel at "home". (Home being womb-like.)
From the very beginning we put the techniques into practice and boy, did they work. Jasper could be calmed by swaddling and shushing in a matter of seconds. Josh impressed many nurses with his calming techniques while we were still in the hospital. The swaddle above all was Jasper's favorite. He would instantly relax if we swaddled him. Arms down by his side and tight, tight, tight!
When he was just past three months old, he started waking more in the middle of the night. He would bust out of his swaddle then wake himself with his flailing arms. After a week of getting up numerous times to reswaddle him, Josh and I decided it was maybe time to stop swaddling. So we did. It's funny because I read on a lot of baby forums how people didn't know if they should still swaddle or were still swaddling their 9-month old. Giving up the swaddle really wasn't quite as traumatic as I thought it would be. One night we just stopped. He did fine. The first couple days were an adjustment but that was that.
After about a month of going cold turkey on the swaddle, he started waking up more in the middle of the night. Not knowing what else to do we swaddled him again. That only lasted a week or two. Turns out you can "help" teething with the swaddle! For that week we had to do a serious tight double swaddle. I guess once he got used to teething he didn't need the swaddle anymore so we stopped and haven't done it since.
New mommy Jess mentioned to me in an email tonight about needing some swaddling lessons. So Josh and I pulled out the video camera and gave her a little tutorial. Sock Monkey was the baby. It turned out pretty good for on the fly, no editing or planning. That's how we roll. So if you desire, you can view our swaddle tutorial which includes the double swaddle we had to use on Jasper.
5 Comments:
Eunice, at June 09, 2009 1:24 AM P.S. Is it a little upsetting to anyone else that sock monkeys butts look just like their faces? Just wondering.... :)
That book was a life saver for most of my friends and we made sure to pass it on to all the others who had not heard of it.
You guys are genius...Super Double Swaddle. Dang!
