We tried to put The Little Sis in the crib over Thanksgiving weekend, and that worked well for a couple of weeks, but then it all went downhill quickly, so we moved her back to the trusty swing. Then she started waking up again overnight even in the swing (darn you, four-month sleep regression!), but thankfully that phase got better — but then the swing broke and we had to order a new motor, so we were without the motor for a couple of weeks. We managed with the swing, but we had to go in and manually push the swing whenever her sleep cycle would change and wake her up.
A week ago, The Husband was talking with The Daycare Teachers. They were saying how The Little Sis pushes with her feet against the side of the crib and rolls over to nap on her belly. To say we were shocked was an understatement, especially considering she had rolled from back to belly just once for us.
That night, we tried something different. We decided to unswaddle her (she was sleeping in the Miracle Blanket still, with just the arms swaddled) and try to let her sleep on her belly. Of course, it’s not recommended at this age for them to sleep on their bellies, but we made the decision to give it a try. She has been sleeping in her crib ever since, still using a pacifier and now sleeping with a frog blanket cuddle toy**. That’s another crib no-no, the cuddle toy, but I needed to try something to keep her from taking her pacifier out of her mouth with her hand and waking herself up, and that did the trick. She’s had two nights in the past week where we didn’t have to go in there at all until time to wake her up. The other nights we’ve had to go in there a couple times to replace a pacifier or pat her back for a bit, but you can tell she’s doing much better with self-soothing when she does have those sleep cycle changes. I’m not quite ready to put up the Miracle Blanket for good, but I did wash it and tuck it away in the drawer. Oh, and we’ve not changed the swing motor yet even though we’ve had it for a good week or two, as this helps us avoid the temptation to just plop her in the swing if she wakes up. Still, it’s nice knowing it’s there, just in case…
Here’s hoping we don’t even need it, though!
**********
**Funny story about the frog blanket cuddle toy. Once I saw that The Little Sis was developing a fondness for the frog blanket, I decided we needed to buy an extra as a backup. I was having trouble finding an exact replacement, which didn’t surprise me since we actually received the blanket when The Big Sis was a baby but she never used it. Well, some more poking around the Internet revealed the fact that this blanket had been recalled — so nowhere can you buy it. Of COURSE that’s the one that The Little Sis has started to get attached to. I contacted the company, and they can send me a replacement frog blanket (that doesn’t look the same), but we are supposed to send the recalled blanket to them first and then they ship out the new one. I’m trying to track down a local retailer for it so I can buy a new one to use once we send the old one back, so we’re not without a frog blanket for at least a week or two, but so far I haven’t had much luck with that. They’re looking into it for me, though, so here’s hoping they find a retailer here!
