Some things we have picked up after a month:
1) The Swaddle: You read so much stuff online: “Swaddling is good,” “Swaddling is bad,” “Only swaddle for 3 months.” All I know is, the swaddle is a life saver. Our baby hates it, but there is no way she will sleep without it! She doesn’t even come close. Once those arms are free, she goes insane and her arms start flapping like shes trying to take flight, accept failing at it…..and then screaming because she can’t fly (that must be why shes screaming right?). Then we go in and swaddle her, and shes out in 10-15 minutes.
Doesn’t get much easier then that right? Wrong. The swaddle is amazing because she oddly is able to sleep, however her split personality kicks in every few minutes and you get bursts of rage as she tries to burst out of it. It then becomes a battle of the sleepy baby vs the angry raging baby. Even more annoying, if the sleepy baby wins, she may pass out, but then as soon as shes in anything less then a “deep” sleep, she will try and burst out even in a half sleep, which can sometimes result in a wide awake fit! This can usually be tapered with a pacifier..that is….only if she allows you to try that…sometimes she just spits it.
 |
| “Come on sweet little angel, lets go to bed…” |
All kidding aside, she is getting easier to figure out and anything she may do to frustrate us is usually forgotten instantly when she smiles (except for when she is making you really mad, and then smiles at you while you are pulling your hair out).
2) So many baby products, so many promises: Its so easy to get wrapped up in the world of baby products that promise specific results. For instance, our baby likes to be rocked, so we bought this:
We figured, “Well, she calms down usually when shes rocked, maybe she will like this!?” This item ended up being great, if you need to kill ten minutes and get yourself a cup of coffee. Its not a very soothing item. The swing rocks sort of unnaturally which I think just makes the baby panic and get confused. We seem to have the same results every time (although its getting better). You sit her down, she looks confused, then starts to wave her arms in hopes of flying out of the seat and escaping us, which is then followed by hiccups and a full fledged panic.
3) Bottles for fussy babies: So after doing some reading, we thought that maybe the baby was so angry all the time because of the way she was being fed. We were just using some regular bottles, some given to us by the hospital (they sent us home with tons of stuff). My wife discovered these bottles online:
These things claim to reduce colic by 80%. That sounded pretty swell in our eyes. They have this odd venting system that sometimes makes a squeaky sound when shes eating. When we first used this, our dog (who is getting used to being second in our house now) looked really confused as if we awarded the baby with a squeaky toy.
The results from the bottle were pretty awesome. We went from a baby that screamed and cried 90% of the time she was awake (the other 10% she was eating), to only crying when its time to sleep. We now get to feed our baby and then enjoy her smile with a little play time! This product has delivered.
