The Miracle Blanket - How I Get My Babies to Sleep at Night

 So, I thought I was going to post pictures of my craft room today.  Then, I got sick and did next to nothing yesterday, so it still needs to be fluffed a bit before I post it.  Rest assured - it is worth the wait.  I love the way it has turned out.  Anyway, so I took pictures a while back of how I swaddle Bella and never ended up posting them.  Then, this morning as I was laying in bed at 8:30 still trying to recover from my cold, I received this email.

"How thankful am I that you told me about the baby straight jacket?? It's 
wonderful. Blog worthy. People. Need. To. Know. ;)
Hope y'all are well!
Love 
Anna"

     I am so glad that it is useful to others. This is a tip-off that we got from our friends Jason and Sarah  Pollack who had their first daughter, Hiba, while they were living in Bethlehem. We went and visited 
when Hiba was 6 weeks old, and Hiba was already sleeping through the night. And they gave us one as a gift before Lily arrived.
      

      So, here it is - The Miracle Blanket. I love that the tagline for it is, "The Gift of Sleep." And, for us 
it really has been. I will say this, I do believe our girls are genetically predisposed to sleeping well. Both John and I are sort of champion sleepers. But, both of our girls started sleeping long periods through the night (7 hours or more) by three weeks. Which I know is sort of freakish and wonderful, and I attribute a large part of it to the Miracle Blanket.

Here is how it works.  I usually swaddle Bella on the changing table and start with a squirmy girl.

Remove bow.  (Okay, a lot of people will not need to do this.)  Tuck little feet into the pocket at the 

bottom of the swaddle.

There are flaps on the inside.  Tuck one flap over the arm and behind the back.  Like so.

Repeat on the other side so that both arms are good and swaddled. This is why I call it a baby straight jacket.

Then, wrap the shorter of the flaps leftover around baby and tuck it in.

Lastly, wrap the longer, final flap all the way around baby.

      Both of my girls have loved sleeping in this. I put them in a sleep positioner in the bed so they can't roll around at all. I have continued to swaddle them long after it suggests, simply because it works for us. And, it will not work for all kids, but I think it is worth a shot. One downside is that you eventually 
have to put them to sleep without the swaddle, once they can really break free from it. We are approaching that day with Bella, and I am not looking forward to it. With Lily it only took one night of her crying it out before she got used to going to sleep without it. So, for us, it was definitely worth all of the sleep on the front end to have one slightly harder night about 8 months in. I even use it for nap times, and it really does almost instantly put Bella to sleep. And then she wakes up smiley - but I think that is just her sweet nature. 

I know there are lots of things that go into a child sleeping, and I do not by any means claim to be an 

expert.  This is what has worked for us, and thanks to the note from Anna, I decided to share it with 

you all today!