Swaddle

My six month old is a little bit weird. She still loves to be swaddled. Love may not be a strong enough word to describe her pure delight when I lay her down in her crib and swaddle her. When she was a newborn I spent my days re-creating the womb for her. As she grew past the newborn stage and the swaddle blanket was a tight fit I discovered the sleep sack. I quickly discovered that my child can not sleep with arms. So I tucked her arms into the sleep sack BUT her arms could escape into the arm holes and then this sweet little angel would wake up screaming. After many sleepless days and nights (you would think eventually the child would learn to sleep with arms – but no!), I just put safety pins in the sleep sack and closed up the arm holes.

Well, she is six months old now. Summer is coming (and the sleep sack is warm). Not to mention she is outgrowing this contraption. So I found several days when I was going to be home with nothing pressing going on and we were going to break the sleep sack habit. Wrote on the calendar, “Sleeping with Arms” for Tuesday and Wednesday.

Tuesday morning dawns. We have a little ceremony of taking out of the safety pins of just one arm (we are going to ease into this entire “no arm” thing!). We proceed to have our nap time routine. Lay the drowsy baby down. Walk out of the room. Close the door. No screaming. Do a little “sleeping with an arm dance”. And go take a shower. As I am stepping out of the shower (all of ten minutes later) I hear a frantic baby screaming – obviously scared or hurt. So I run into her room thinking the child is bleeding or there is an intruder in her room only to find this dear little one with her one arm infront of her face, eyes wide open, face of extreme terror, and screaming. Ok, she is scared of her arm – encouraged that yes this is the right thing to do (scared of your arm, really the time has come to sleep with your arm!). So I lay her arm down and give her the pacifier. The child does not sleep for this nap. UGH! Afternoon nap – no sleep. By bedtime she is overly tired but I lay my one armed bandit down anyway. She lays in her bed for an entire 10 seconds before screaming. At 12:30 that night, I Google and discover that there are sleep sacks available through size 4T. Armed with that piece of information my one armed bandit is now properly swaddled.

She is so peaceful when swaddled. Huge smile on her face. Drowsy eyelids. Cuddly. I know she will never be cold. She is happy AND sleeping (which means we are all happy).

The lesson I learned on this particular Tuesday: Sleeping with arms is just too complicated. No arms = happiness!

(I would include a picture but am NOT taking the chance to wake up this child with the flash of a camera!)