Thank God for Swaddlers

One of the biggest challenges of taking care of newborn is making sure that they get plenty to eat and plenty of sleep. It seems in the first few weeks getting them to sleep is easy. Sometimes they will forgo eating so they can sleep. But around week 3 or 4 sleeping becomes more of a problem. This was the case with Jaron. He slept great for me the first couple of weeks. He took good naps and slept well at night. Then he began to not nap well and the amount he slept at night went down. After a couple of days of this both Jaron and I were exhausted. It was so sad to see him looking up at me with his droopy eyes. I knew he was exhausted. He would fall asleep for a few minutes in my arms only to startle and wake back up. Only after being awake for hours would he be so exhausted that he would finally go to sleep. After a couple of weeks of this and trying everything I knew to do, rock him, nurse him to sleep, bounce him around in my arms, etc. I decided I needed some more ideas because things couldn't go on this way.

I found a blogspot where this lady is kind enough to share with the rest of the world her secrets to helping her kids sleep. She has read several books on getting your baby to sleep and has combined them to get her 3 kids to sleep well. One of the things she mentioned was swaddling your kids. I know swaddling isn't anything new, but I didn't swaddle Jaron because he didn't seem to like it. I put a swaddle around his torso and legs to keep him warm but I never put his arms in the swaddle because he liked to have them up near his face. She said you should swaddle your baby whether they like it or not because it prevents his arms from moving around and waking him up. After watching Jaron try to fall asleep I realized this was his problem. He moves so much in his sleep he would wake himself up.

So Thursday evening (evening is the toughest time of day to get him to fall asleep) we stuck him in a swaddle. He fussed and wiggled around for a minute and then he was out. He took a good nap. That night he went 5 hours before eating and slept 12 hours. Yesterday he went down easily for all his naps and last night slept 10 1/2 hours waking every 4 hours to eat. We both woke up rested and happy. I am so grateful swaddling Jaron was all it took to help him sleep.

Auntie Pam, thank you for the swaddlers. They are amazing.