'Happiest baby on the block' tips

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The baby is awake 7-9, 11-1, 4-10 on a good day; sometimes she skips the 1-4 nap altogether and then it's a little harder because she is too tired not to be cranky and yet cannot sleep for some reason. On no-nap days, 3-7 can be fussy time, and crying it out does not work - we tried once for 80 min.

However, we have to swaddle and TAPE her with duct tape around the upper arms overnight. I know it sounds awful, but it works and makes for a happy baby. At night, unwaddled and even loosely swaddled babies feel terribly unsafe - their motion control is very poor and they hit themselves in the face, scratch, and get scared because they don't realize it's their own hands that are misbehaving. Dr. Karp explains this and other baby phychology aspects very well. His book gave me and my husband the confidence and the skills to handle our baby well with zero previous baby experience.

Our baby usually tries to unswaddle herself at about 3 AM, and if she is successful, she becomes very scared of her arms. Then I pick her up, feed her, swaddle/tape her, and she's back to sleep in 20 minutes. This happened twice in the last month. She used to be swaddled about 20 hours a day, and now she's only swaddled during night and the late afternoon nap. I am guessing we'll be done day swaddling in 1-2 months, but night swaddling is good for a year.

We also give her about 1 hour of totally naked time per day to make sure there is no diaper rash to make her irritated. She's starting to reach for toys in her bouncy seat, but I am really looking forward to the time that we can play with toys together - make pseudo-tea parties etc.

:)

--
Katya

P.S.  In the US, you cannot buy large enough swaddling sheets, at least
not in the major outlets.  Buy regular sheets and make swaddling sheets
with a sawing machine.

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