Anyway, by the time we headed home, we were swaddling masters. Then we got home and realized that all of the receiving blankets we had were much smaller than the blankets at the hospital. Caleb had already demonstrated his squirming abilities and we knew there was no way those little blankets would hold him in. But have no fear...his SwaddleMe came to the rescue. This fascinating little blanket is made just for swaddling and has velcro tabs to secure the swaddle. We'd gotten one as a shower gift. I didn't know if we'd be able to use it in the beginning because the one we got was made with a microfleece fabric and seemed like it would be too warm. But we knew we weren't going to survive without being able to swaddle the little guy, so I pulled out the SwaddleMe and we gave it a shot. It was a life saver!
For a while after Caleb was born, if he was starting to fuss, we'd just swaddle him and lay him on his side and BAM...happy baby. I don't know what we would have done without it! After a bit I decided that we needed to buy another one because it was so hard to wash the one we had since we were using it all the time. Caleb was always swaddled when he slept and he slept quite a bit! So I went to Babies R Us to get another SwaddleMe. I opted for a lighter weight one for the remaining warm months. When I got it home and took it out, I noticed that it had a slit in the back. Apparently, this swaddle was designed to be used in a car seat! You could strap him into the car seat and still swaddle him! Someone was saying recently how it amazing how much baby stuff is out there...you think of something that would be useful and then you go to the baby store and there it is! But this? This was a dream come true. I know I'm being a little dramatic, but you have to understand how much Caleb hated his car seat in the beginning. He would scream at the top of his lungs the entire time he was in it...so much, in fact, that his screaming would preclude breathing at times. He'd already gotten somewhat used to the car seat before we'd found the swaddle, but it still seems to work wonders. I think he stays asleep much better in his car seat when he's swaddled, which comes in handy.
Okay, I've now written a rather long post about swaddling and haven't even gotten to my original intended point. You see, as I mentioned earlier, Caleb can be quite the squirmer. He has gotten pretty good at working his little hands out of the swaddle during naps...
But the other morning, Jason went in to say goodbye to him before he left for work and this little guy had squirmed his way halfway out of the thing! He was just lying there looking at us as if to say, "What?" It was pretty cute...
