Arm Freedom

Summer was a great sleeper as a newborn. We were blessed with a baby who was just barely difficult to put to sleep at night, but slept like a champ for 5 hours straight coming home from the hospital. Within a few short weeks, the 5 hours turned in to 9.5 hours. Ever since then, we were rewarded with really only one night feeding.

The past several weeks have been a learning experience with sleep. We no longer have 9 hours of uninterrupted sleep, although we can hardly complain.

Summer slept best while swaddled in a swaddling blankets as her arms often wake her up. As she's gaining greater control of her arms, starting about a month ago she'd be found with her arms sneaking out of the swaddle and tangled up in the blanket. She'd wake herself up with her arm crammed under her pacifier and would loudly suckle on her fist (we can only assume she thought this was her food source). However, she would be fairly easy to put to sleep in one of several ways: feed, reinsert pacifier, reswaddle.

There came a time when we needed to rethink the swaddle. She seems to be outgrowing it, yet this is all she's ever known. We spent this past week with her left arm out of the blanket. This was a great success, as she wasn't too distracted by her free hand. However, I purposefully chose her less active hand. When attempting to put her to sleep with both arms free the next night, I laid her down only to have her stare back at me, as if she didn't know what to do. This happened repeatedly, so we decided to wait until the weekend to attempt the full unraveling of her arms.

Today is that day. She fell asleep as if napping at first. After a half hour, it took nearly two hours of feeding, rocking, swaying the mattress, holding her tiny little hand to get her to stop staring and simply fall asleep. It helped for her to hold something soft, as our fingers wouldn't be there all night.

Over the next several weeks, we will be working with our infant, no longer a newborn, on learning to go to sleep on her own. This is sure to be a big, stressful venture for all of us, as sleep deprivation is one of the most energy-sucking things that one can endure. Rewards for our efforts will be great. Summer is an incredible baby, really. I just need to keep this in mind after she doesn't fall back asleep right away at 3am tonight.