Sleep Positioning Issues Continued . . .

A month or two ago, I wrote a post about our issues with sleep positioning. Well, now there are more issues. Our little girl never stops moving--even when she is sleeping! A month ago, the issue we were having was that she was wiggling out of the sleep positioner (and out of the back sleeping position) in the middle of the night because we had the pack n' play mattress inclined. Well, we finally got the reflux under control, so we were able to take her off the incline. But she was still wiggling out of the sleep positioner. We stopped using the sleep positioner and I was pretty comfortable with putting her down on her back and just letting her find her own position. She has never rolled over onto her tummy during her sleep, but she usually ends up on her side. And there is no telling which way her head will be facing when we wake up--sometimes it ends up where her feet originally were when we put her down.

Well, now we have moved her to her crib and have a whole new set of issues. I woke up several mornings and found her on her side with her face only about 1/4 to 1/2 inch away from the bumper pad. That made me scared that she would suffocate on the bumper pad. When I looked it up online, I found out that the American Academy of Pediatrics actually now recommends that you not use a bumper pad. Easy enough--I took the bumper pad out of the crib. Problem solved, right? Not quite. Now she is rolling into the side of the crib and bumping her head, and her arms and legs are sometimes hanging out of the crib between the slats. Keep in mind that we still swaddle her legs (but not her arms)--so she is doing all this moving around while still being swaddled. Little Houdini? Dr. says it would be impossible for her to hit her head hard enough to bruise or hurt herself and the slats are close enough together that she can't get her head stuck. But it still seems uncomfortable--I know I would not be comfortable like that. So we needed another solution. I looked this up online and found that you can get mesh bumper pads now. The one we have decided to get goes all the way up the side of the crib and over the front railing. So when she starts pulling up she won't be able to hurt herself or climb out of the crib by climbing on top of the bumper, and the teething guard that goes over the front railing will prevent her from chewing on the wood railing. Here is the link for the one we ordered: http://www.childsafetyhousecallsproducts.com/Mesh-Crib-Shield.html. We actually ordered it from Wal-Mart and not from the website that is posted--but the posted website has more info. on it. We are going to put it on tomorrow and see if it works. Keeping our fingers crossed!

Also, next round of shots is this coming Friday--wish us luck! We are hoping for a better experience than the one we had last time!

--Amanda