Swaddling Baby
Baby D is coming along nicely since his arrival in August. He’s gone through many little phases to get where he is today and now there’s a smiley, giggling wee man living among us.
Except at naptimes.
When the normally amiable fella starts getting tired, he gets cranky. It’s a short jump from cranky to Banshee, let me tell you, and an unpleasant one at that. And being the caring parents we are, we try to soothe him to sleep, rocking him, singing to him, handstands, cartwheels, comedy routines. Tried them all.
On the odd occassion, when Mrs L was busy with the kids, she’d leave the baby on the sofa for a minute, but when she came back she found he’d gone to sleep on his own. So we tried a little experiment. Whenever baby was getting tired we swaddled him, wrapping him up tightly in a blanket with his arms by his sides and setting him down. It’s amazing how quickly he’s got used to this and how easily he now goes to sleep.
It’s certainly better than presevering with soothing him and getting more agitated the angrier he gets, which was terrible and left both of us emotionally shattered. The one thing to be careful of, though is keeping baby on his back. There’s a danger if he’s on his side that he might roll over onto his face.
Wasn’t swaddling babies a Russian experiment back in the eighties. Mrs Parnell believed in it but the good lady had a “Plan B”, the vacumn cleaner, something to do with the sound resonated was the equilivent of noise in the womb. Not so sure about Mrs Parnell’s scientific assessment but it worked and worked well - until teething….