Un-Swaddled!

the beloved swaddle

When we were traveling last week, the kids and I all slept in the same room wherever we stayed. This was a good practice run for Enoch learning how to sleep with other people in the room (we have been hoping to move Karis into his room at home soon). And, since Karis goes to bed later than him (it's an unfair world, I know...) it was also a helpful test run of him sleeping through Sweet Girl's many falling asleep noises (we lay her down for bedtime while she's awake and let her fall asleep on her own).

So, after I returned from traveling, Hugh and I decided that the only thing keeping us from moving Sweet Girl to Little Man's room was her swaddle.  We've been swaddling her for bedtime and for naps since she was teensy, so she sleeps best when her arms are tight by her side and she's cocooned in there like a little worm.  Unfortunately though, she's big enough (and strong enough) that she can break an arm or two out pretty easily.  She usually does this one or two times per night.  When she breaks out, a few things happen: her free arm gets chilly (we swaddle her in her birthday suit) and she has a hard time going back to sleep.  And thus, since she's about to be too big to swaddle at all anyway, we thought we'd start working on breaking her reliance on the swaddle for sleeping.

On this past Monday, we took the plunge for bedtime.  For the first two nights I dressed her in soft jammies, rocked her to sleep, and then laid her down, at which point her eyes shot open.  Thankfully though, she was content to hang out and put herself to sleep like normal (probably because she was soo sleepy to begin with).  Then last night I only rocked her just enough to get her calm before laying her down, and she did the same.

look at those free arms!

The nights have gone smoother than I expected, meaning that she has been able to self-soothe her way through the night with no tears and no help from us. This surprised me since she's had difficulty in the past going back to sleep when her hands are out and free.  I can definitely tell she's not fully converted yet though because she hasn't taken the transition as well for nap time.  I'm okay with being patient with that though and working on small changes slowly...

She loves being able to roll around freely as
soon as she wakes up instead of having to wait on me

And did I mention that I love this small change because she's just so cuddly and cute in her jammies??  ;)

posted from Bloggeroid