Snuggle in Bronze
Kirkland, WA
One Year Ago: Somebody Needs a Nap
Dear Gem – Month 5
Month 5 has been a big month for us. You’ve really started to move. You started rolling over a few weeks ago, and now we’ve reached a point where you don’t stay where I put you. You’re not quite crawling yet, but you manage to cover quite a bit of ground with rolling and scooching.
You also have a great deal more control over your fingers. You can reach out and grab things (judging distance has improved too), pick them up, turn them over, whack them on the floor, or unfortunately, your own head, and you’ve discovered that it’s a whole lot more difficult for me to put you down when you are clinging to my clothes and hair. Smarty pants.
You are supposed to be sleeping right now, but I went to check on you a few moments ago and you were wide awake with your feet up in the air and you were holding on to your foot. This is a favorite position for you these days. To make things interesting, one of your legs was completely outside of your jammies – one piece, footed jammies. And I had swaddled you when I put you down. So somehow, without being heard over the monitor you managed to get out of your swaddling, get a leg out of your jammies and play grab the toesies while I wasn’t looking. You surprise me nearly every day.
We are having so much fun with you.
I love you
Mommy
Read more Letters to Gem.
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One Year Ago: Serenity
Two Years Ago: My Hillbilly Husband
Party like a Pirate
Saturday night we celebrated Captain RedBeard’s birthday. By Captain RedBeard, I mean my little brother, Timmy (Pronounced timMAY! a la South Park).
We celebrated with a pirate themed pub crawl through some of Seattle’s finest drinking establishments, led by the soon-to-be Mrs. RedBeard, Mel.
Mr. H and I dressed the part as well.
What? You’ve never seen a pirate wearing an argyle sweater?
Yar!
Then Grandma called to say Gem was missing me, and I did my best not to drive like a bat out of hell all the way home. This was the first time we’d left her to go out and play.
In Her Grip
For months my baby girl would hold on to a toy you put in her hand, but it wasn’t really meaningful to her. And then, some moment when I wasn’t watching, she started playing with them: holding, shaking, tasting, passing it from hand to hand until it drops to the floor and the entire world comes to an end. At times I’ve even caught her talking to them, and I don’t know if I have ever witnessed anything quite so endearing.
She’s picked her favorite toys as well. Not one favorite toy. Three. And she tries to hold on to all three of them at the same time, with varying degrees of success. I clipped two of them together in an attempt to save my own sanity. The toys are easier for her to hold; my sanity is still in question.
Burrito Baby
Some times the experts do know best.
We studied up a lot on the best childcare techniques and theories before Gem was born. One of the things we kept coming across over and over again was the 5 Ss – 5 soothing techniques that when used in combination should help to calm a stressed out baby.
The basic concept behind these techniques is duplicating the environment in the womb to make baby feel safe
- Swinging – motion
- Shushing sounds – soothing sounds
- Side or Stomach – for holding, not for sleeping
- Sucking – pacifier or bottle or breastfeeding
- Swaddling
We dutifully went through the steps when Gem was fussy, and swaddled her every night when putting her to bed. All of the steps seemed to make her feel better except swaddling. Swaddling made her mad. Since the purpose of these steps was to relieve her stress, we thought why keep this up? So we stopped swaddling.
There was no major fallout from excluding that step, but I stressed a bit on colder nights. I couldn’t think of a good way to keep her warm since loose blankets in the crib are a no-no.
Then a couple weeks ago we went to a reunion from our childbirth class to meet everyone’s babies, and touch base on how we were all doing. We got to talking about the 5 Ss and how helpful they are, and I mentioned how Gem really hates to be swaddled.
“Our’s does too,” replied one of the dads, “but we swaddle her up every night anyways, and she sleeps like a rock.”
So I thought I’d give it another try. She started screaming while I was wrapping her up. I wrapped her anyways, and told myself I’d step away where she can’t see me and let her go for 5 minutes; then I would reassess what to do next. She was passed out in less than 2 minutes. Now that we’ve been doing this for a while, she doesn’t even fuss every time I wrap her up – and she doesn’t wake up in the middle of the night as often either.
One of the things about swaddling a baby who is bigger than newborn, is that the receiving blankets are completely worthless. The receiving blankets are much to small to swaddle a baby over 12 pounds.
Grandma to the rescue.
My mom went to the fabric store and picked out several different patterns of flannel. The bolts are roughly 3 feet wide, mom had them just cut the length to match the width so they were square. Then she did a quick hem around the edges.
These blankets are pretty much all we use anymore. The little receiving blankets make great burp cloths, but to snuggle up with baby, we use the big flannels. They have been a life saver.
Wrap her up like a burrito, and my baby sleeps like a Gem.
One year ago: The Great Tree
Three years ago: Little Highlander
Stopping to Smell the Roses
One Year Ago: Time Flies (I was actually hinting that I was pregnant in this post)
Four Years Ago: We Are One Month Away From Our First Wedding Anniversary
