How To Swaddle A Wriggly Baby

So, most of the people who are coming across my blog are wondering how to swaddle a wriggly baby. My post on swaddling, shows you how to properly tie the blanket to get a secure swaddle, but that can be tough to do once your baby has become a more active and won't stay still long enough to complete all the folds.

First things first, people. Make sure you are pulling the swaddle tight at every fold. You want to make it tight, because a tight swaddle mimics the warmth and security a baby feels when being held and cradled by their momma and helps the baby fall asleep fast and stay asleep long. That's all we really want, isn't it? Especially, after the Momma Bootcamp that is the first 3 weeks.

The next important item on our agenda is how to get that baby to stay still long enough for you to swaddle. Well, all you need is a singing, light-up bunny rabbit. No, seriously, the answer is to distract your baby with blinking lights and a fun song while you do all the wrapping. By the time the bunny hop song is over, your baby will be swaddled nice and tight and ready for a good night's sleep or a nice long nap. Sound easy as pie? Well, it is!

We also use this technique for changing a wriggly baby's diaper or keeping a tired baby happy while we dress him after bath time. Distraction. It's where it's at.

This is Baby A with the singing bunny. By far the best distraction toy that we have. The little chicks move about and the bunny's cheeks light up and ears flap -- all while singing jailhouse rock or something. The song last about 45 seconds, which is perfect length for swaddling my little angel. My mom picked this little gem up for us at Easter time from CVS or Walgreen's. Best $14.99 spent. Ever.

As you can see from the pic, Baby A is about to get swaddled for nap here. May seem silly, but works like a charm. And isn't parenting really just about being silly and making the baby happy, anyway? At least, at first, right?

So here he is watching a you tube video of Hakuna Matata from The Lion King -- at least, I think that is what he was watching. I will be honest here, he is just mildy interested. If you really want to push a reset button, what you need is Baby Beluga. Seriously, it is like the M-80 of all baby tools. It is the Air Force One of my mommy tools handbag. I love it so much, I am going to link it at the bottom of this post, I love it that much. I may even love it more than Baby A does. True story.

Baby Beluga in all its glory!

There you have it folks, my tips for getting things done,even with a wriggly baby!
Grab your oversize swaddle blanket from Swaddle Designs.

xoxo,
Melissa

I'm A Poop Doula

"I'm a poop doula", I thought to myself as I picked up the phone to tell Arvind, "Ajay had a big poo and it was nice and smooth." Naive mom, checking in again. I had no idea how much thought I would have to put into my baby's bowel movements. Time, frequency, texture/consistency -- you name it, I've had to log it. No pun intended, haha.

Ajay is an interesting pooper (I am sure he will thank me for this post later in life). When he was first born, I heard he had the meconium poops -- they are black and tarry. The reason I say that I heard he had them was because I did not change a single dipe in the hospital, it never occurred to me. The nurses said he was pooping fine and that he had to get the meconium out so that he wouldn't get jaundice or something like that. Well, he was jaundiced anyway, despite our best poop efforts.

Another interesting thing I learned about newborn poop was that breastfed baby poo has a more pleasant smell than formula poop. Hmm, nice to know, considering we planned to exclusively breastfeed, we get the pleasant poo. After the meconium, comes the seedy mustard poop. I swear it looks like diarrhea, but we were told not to be alarmed with the consistency. He had seedy mustard poos that looked, literally, like seeds in the diaper. Someone please explain that to me. Then, we had cottage cheese mustard poos fairly regularly in the first 4-6 weeks. I'd say maybe 3-4 times a day. Then he slowed down to about twice a day for a couple of weeks. The poos were still runny, though. The just after his 8 week check-up, he was every other day. And finally, from about 8 weeks to 16 weeks, my boy was a once a weeker. Let's talk about this for a second. When he was only going once a week, the poos were still soft, so he definitely was not constipated. In fact, you can read all over the internet that it is very common for exclusively breastfed babies to poo only once every 7-10 days. Common? Looking back, I think we got lucky.

Then, at almost 5 months old, when we started solids we got to see firsthand what constipation was. He ate all the bananas and in no time he was backed up. He had to strain and strain and strain and what he produced was, well, interesting. First, it was shaped like a hamburger patty, but colors varied between yellowy banana color and some greenish color to almost a tarry black - it was speckled. I think it looked like a crab patty. Mmm, chew on that. So, we had to stop the solids and give him some prune juice and finally get things going again.

Well, he still gets backed up on a fairly regular basis. Which is why I like to think of myself as a poop doula. First, I had to wonder when he was going to poop because he was only going once a week. Now, I know he is going to poop, but I have to check consistency and texture. Nowadays, when he gets constipated, I can tell, because there really are little hard pebbles coming out and I get so excited when he has a nice, giant, soft poo. Oh, what my life has become and I wouldn't trade it for the world. Well, I guess I gotta go -- there's probably a diaper that needs changing around here.

Changing The Diaper -- so to speak

I remember when Ajay was first born he wore these tiny, tiny diapers that they give you in the hospital and he wore those for about the first 3 weeks, maybe a month. I don't know, just until we finally made our first trip to Costco. After that, he wore Kirkland brand 1-2 diapers. He's 6 months now and still fits pretty well in the 1-2's.

Every time we would go for our diaper buying trip, Arvind would do the calculation of A's weight and age to see if we would need to buy a box of 3's. Well, based on his weight, he's just not quite there yet. BUT, ever since he was about 4 months old he has been soaking the 1-2's during the overnight AND I think that may have been disturbing his sleep. So, about 2 weeks ago, I moved him into the size 3 diapers just for the overnight. They looked a little giant at first, but have worked like a charm for keeping my boy comfy and dry so he can get a good night's sleep.

So, I guess the whole point of the post is just to say, that a good rule of thumb for going up a size in diapers is not just taking weight into account, but how much your baby is soaking their current diapers, especially for the overnight. Who wants to sleep in urine?? Haha, I mean, I am sure it is all warm for the first minute but after that I'd be waking up, too!