On the move

I've been meaning to write about Abby's ability to move in amazing ways, and I am finally getting to it now. Anyway, Abby is a very squirmy sleeper. I thought Matthew was squirmy as a baby, but Abby has redefined squirmy. To give you an idea of what I mean, Abby slept in the Halo sleep sack swaddler until she was 1 month. Then she was consistently breaking out of it, so I had to try other options. Sam slept in the sleep sack until he was 4 or 5 months. So then I got what's called the Miracle Blanket, which is an odd shaped blanket that holds a baby's arms down and wraps around and around and around them. My description doesn't do it justice, just go to the link to see what I mean. That worked for maybe another month or so, then she was consistently breaking out of the Miracle Blanket. So it was a Miracle for a month. One night she even wiggled her arm out of her jammies and out of the Miracle Blanket. So the Miracle Blanket kept her PJ sleeve swaddled, but not her little arm.

At that point, I had to explore more options. One would think that maybe we should stop swaddling at that point, but really, Abby will not sleep unless she's swaddled. She is way to wiggly and wiggles, squirms and so on herself awake far too often or won't even settle unless she's swaddled. Eventually she will learn to sleep unswaddled, but we'll face that battle down the road.

So my next strategy was to try the Woombie. The Woombie is basically a baby-body-sleeve. You zip your baby into this little tube (with an opening for the head, of course) and they can move their arms around some inside the tube, but not so much that they're flailing around waking themselves. So Abby got a clearance Woombie that's orange with green ruffles. And we zip her into it and wrap the Miracle Blanket around the outside. She's been sleeping that way for maybe 6 weeks now. Lately she's stretched the head opening so much that she can get her hands out, but not generally her entire arms. And she's starting to suck her fingers, so access to the hands is not a bad thing.

So every night I put her in her crib with her feet touching the end of the crib. And every night she wakes us up once or twice with her head touching the opposite end of the crib. I wish I had time-elapsed photography to see how she manages to do this, because she is really a little sausage lying in her crib, but she makes it from one end to the other, every night, usually more than once a night. And sometimes she makes it to the end and has rotated a quarter turn or even 180 degrees. So she is a very squirmy baby and definitely on the move.