Okay, so it has been a long time since my last post. I'm starting to wake up now that our second baby is sleeping through the night. We've been learning a lot as parents of two kids, and so I'm hoping to chronicle some of that stuff on the blog.
The first thing is swaddling. With our first baby, Justin (my husband), swaddled in rare form at key moments to calm Lewis down. But this time, I was up in the middle of the night often trying to get Owen back to sleep and having trouble. Owen has been a relatively easy baby with only a few really fussy instances. Still, in the middle of the night when you're exhausted and in a daze, you just want that baby to get back to sleep ASAP.
We were enrolled in a program through our insurance company that got a nurse involved in our prenatal care. Basically she called about once a month to check on my progress and answer questions. It was actually really nice because she could answer questions I was embarrassed to ask anyone else as a second time mom. This nurse sent me the DVD called THE HAPPIEST BABY ON THE BLOCK, by Dr. Harvey Karp, which turned out to be very helpful in regards to the whole sleep issue. Dr. Karp recommends the swaddling thing as part of his "4th trimester" theory. You want to recreate the womblike atmosphere, and let's face it--babies are pretty snuggly trapped at the end of pregnancy.
We found that the swaddling trick really worked for Owen. That coupled with background noise provided by a fan, which Karp also recommends. Owen has been sleeping through the night for a couple of weeks now. He's going 8-10 hours or more now at 12 weeks, and it is fantastic! We still swaddle Owen at night with one arm out. He falls right to sleep once he's in position. It's wonderful. Lewis started sleeping through the night at about 13 weeks, and Owen beat him by about 3 weeks using Dr. Karp's recommendations. Just something to think about for those of you with newborns or pregnant!
More to come......
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1 comment:
Dear Shelley,
Congratulations and thank you so much for mentioning "The Happiest Baby on the Block" DVD. Dr. Karp's techniques have helped countless parents calm their baby's fussing and add 1-3 hours to their sleep. We are really glad to hear they have worked so well for you too!
Also, do you know about our "Super-Soothing" Sleep Sounds CD? It has specially engineered white noise sounds that can calm crying babies and - when played all night - can instantly boost sleep by 1-3 hours. Dr. Karp recommends it to help sleep for at least the first year (it's so comforting to little kids....like an auditory "teddy bear"). Parents love this CD because it’s super easy to control the volume and wean babies off of (whenever you want), it keeps babies calm on car rides, and helps them sleep when spending the night at grandma's.
I hope this helps.
Have a great T'giving!
The Happiest Baby Team
suzana@thehappiestbaby.com
www.thehappiestbaby.com
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