Trick Baby

Trick baby is what Cody sometimes calls Cade.

When he was a tiny newborn (and wasn't wearing my arms out carrying him around) he was so small we laid him horizontally in his pack and play to sleep.  He wasn't long enough (18 inches) to be anywhere near reaching one side or the other. Sometime around 2-3 weeks old, Cade started to rotate in his sleep. The first time he did it, I woke Cody up to show him. He grumbled something I couldn't understand and when I asked him what he said, he replied "Trick baby" and fell back asleep. Cade would shimmy somehow and wind up a complete 180 degrees from how we laid him down. He also moved so much that he would roll completely on his side. Sometimes his face was close to the mattress. At that point we started swaddling with his arms out to stop himself from rolling over. But he would still "shimmy" around until he was sideways.

When we moved Cade into his crib, he had more room to move. He outgrew the swaddle blankets I had so I decided to try Sleep Sacks until I could buy new ones. It's too difficult to keep him swaddled in a regular blanket because he moves too much. He's bust out of that in a heartbeat. He was still rotating around in his crib, so he starts laying longways and ends up moving sideways. So...if you're looking down into his crib, his head is at 9:00 when we lay him down and through the night he winds up with his head at 12:00. Make sense?

There isn't really a problem here, except he's still sleeping mostly 3-5 hours at a time. That one night of solid sleep was another trick he pulled on us.

Last night we laid him down at 9, and he went right to sleep. I heard him whining (not crying) on the monitor at 1:15. I normally wait to see if he'll go back to sleep, but last night I decided to try something different. I went into the nursery and of course he had moved to his 12:00 position, and the top of his head was touching the side of the crib. I (very gently) turned him back to the "starting position" and guess what? He went right back to sleep. And continued to sleep. Until 4:00.

So my epiphany (because every good thought is an epiphany at 1:30 am) is that maybe he isn't waking up because he's hungry all the time. Maybe he wakes up because his head gets up against that rail. It's never pressing hard on his head, but I'm sure it either bothers him because he can no longer move around or because the mesh crib liner is kind of scratchy on him.

Now my question is...how do I keep him from moving around so much? There are baby sleep positioners out there that you can buy, but I don't know much about them. He's too big to try a Nap Nanny now I think, and would outgrow it soon anyway (and yes I know the issues with Nap Nanny's, but they were because idiot people were using them incorrectly, like putting the Nap Nanny in bed with them). And I found this thing on Amazon which I think would freak him the hell out because he wouldn't be able to move at all. It's literally an overpriced crib sheet with a harness on it.

Any suggestions?

If Mom would just let me sleep on her all the time....