One month ago I left for a two week combination trip; three nights in New Orleans for a bachelor party JazzFest, followed by a five hour layover in Orlando, then a ten day work trip to India. Two nights before that trip, to which friends and co-workers alike agreed "what kind of new mother let's her husband do that kind of thing" (Answer:An awesome one), we tried a new contraption in the infant's bed.
Based on mild some digestive and/or acid reflux types of issues, we had the little one sleeping on a wedge that was placed under the sheet in her crib. The issue was that she would very quickly wiggle her way down and either restlessly sleep on the horizontal plane or get her feet stuck in the slats in the crib, inevitably waking herself up. A solution a friend recommended (everyone always has a recommendation, which I guess I do now as well which is kind of the point of this post) was a thing called a "Baby Stay Asleep". I'm going to be honest, it looks like some sort of baby restraining device more fit for a mental institution (albeit a very low-risk institution as there is only velcro and no straps and buckles).
It's a fitted sheet that has a velcro harness like contraption sewed to it, so the baby can't slide around and bumpers on the side so the kid can't roll over (or at least that's what their advertisement says, though I would think the velcro harness serves that purpose as well).
I felt bad the first night we placed her in it. I felt a lot better the next morning when I realized I hadn't been awakened. Seven hours of bliss. She had gone, at most, five hours in the crib prior to this. Over the next two weeks, while I was gone and as she went back to work (when Lauren hit 12 weeks old), the Baby Stay Asleep continued to work its wonders. In the month that we've used it, she's woken up before 6am a grand total of one time. Part of this may be the fact that she's aging and I'm sure we're creating an issue for the time that comes when it's no longer socially acceptable to velcro strap your child to a bed; however, for the time being, who cares? Our baby stays asleep with the Baby Stay Asleep.
