Double your swaddle...double your fun.

So, I know I haven’t blogged in forever, yadda yadda yadda….but a few of us mamas were talking about swaddling on Twitter –  Jessica and Colleen, specifically – and I volunteered to vlog how we do our version of the double swaddle / swaddle strap.  Evidently it was just the kick in the hind end that I needed to dust off the blog.  If you have no interest in swaddling or babies or anything of that nature, just skip this post because it will be of little interest to you.

So.  The swaddle.  As I mention in the video, hubs and I have spent quite a bit of money on swaddle supplies for our little Houdini baby.  We have:

1. 4 Halo sleepsack swaddles – 1 fleece newborn size, 1 cotton newborn size, 2 cotton size small
2. 1 Woombie (we also returned 1″Houdini Woombie – supposedly a “stronger” version of the Woombie but we couldn’t tell a difference between it and the original, so it went back to Amazon)
3. 4 hand-me-down “First Years” swaddle blankets – these seem to be most like the Summer Infant swaddle blankets
4. a package of Aden & Anais swaddle blankets

There are pros and cons to all of these – the A&A blankets worked perfectly for “Russian swaddling” for about a week (Google it if you don’t know what that is) but then L figured out how to get her arms out so that was a bust.  We tried using 2 A&A blankets – 1 swaddled Russian style, and then another on top of that swaddled “traditionally” but it was too hot.  The Woombie was perfect for her when she was still a tiny little peanut, but she is able to get her arms up by her face/chin in the Woombie and she needs her arms at her sides to keep from flailing herself awake.

We’ve had the most luck with the Halo sleepsack swaddles, hence why we have 4 of them – including a “back-up” swaddle at all times in case of an unfortunate diaper leak incident in the middle of the night.  Not that that’s happened  on a Sunday night when we were both exhausted or anything.   Ahem.

The Halo swaddles are great, but no matter how tightly I wrap the “wings” around her arms, she’s still able to wiggle them up and around to get them to her face.  (And before I get emails saying “maybe she doesn’t want to be swaddled!  That’s why she’s breaking out of them!  Let her sleep with her hands by her face!”  I will say that I’ve tried putting her down to sleep for naps unswaddled and it’s had disastrous results. DISASTROUS.)  So, I needed reinforcements with the Halo swaddle.

Admittedly, this version isn’t going to work very well once it gets hot here (we’re still using our furnace because it’s in the 40′s at night, so L isn’t at risk of overheating) but I’m using my noggin and trying to figure out a way to do it during the summer months, too.  Our parents think that using the “baby straightjacket” version of swaddling might be a bit extreme…but you can’t argue with results, and those results are SLEEP for us and for her, which is important.

SO!  The video.  I apologize in advance for the number of times I sniff during the video – if I do this in real life as much as I do during this video, I feel very sorry for my friends and family because it’s slightly out of control.  Also, pay no attention to my lack of makeup / messy hair –  it’s usually a choice between makeup or hair, not both….and evidently today it was neither.  Enough disclaimers.

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