Soren's all hung up!

"How is he sleeping?" friends and even perfect strangers ask when they see our active, alert baby. Well, the answer is, "Much better, now that we're putting him to bed in a hammock!"

We actually have two hammocks strung up for Soren's sleeping pleasure, and it's been a little over two weeks that he's been testing them out. I will go so far as to say they have transformed our nights and quieted our days.

We started with an Amby hammock upstairs, next to our bed. It replaced a bassinet that required Soren to sleep on his back on a flat, firm surface, which all new parents know is the optimal positioning, but his "startle reflex" was so strong, he consistently flailed his limbs when laid down and woke himself up, sometimes with a swift BOP to his forehead! Yes, we tried swaddling, and that worked up until he was six weeks old, but then he protested and kicked his way out of his swaddle blankets, even when we knotted them. I tell you, there is nothing more disheartening than having a baby get mad and wake himself up in the middle of the night after you nurse him, change his diaper, and attempt to re-swaddle him... Then we tried laying Soren on his side and keeping him there with two foam wedges, but still the upright arm flailed unstoppably. He slept better, but only marginally so.

Finally I turned to the intriguing hammock bed that a friend of mine had for her preemie. After doing some web research, I concluded it was probably a good fit for our restless sleeper, but balked at the $240 price tag. So I put out a call on our local "PTBabies" listserve (an awesome networking tool) for one to borrow, try and possibly buy. Four people in the area responded (!), and we had one delivered a few days later, which we eventually bought for $100. I only wish we'd had it from the beginning.

The concept is that a hammock's curved and cozy sleep environment resembles the womb, and because it is attached to a spring, any movement on the part of the baby bounces the hammock and a twitch that might lead to waking on a flat surface actually jiggles the baby BACK to sleep. I've seen it, so I believe it! The Amby attaches to a movable stand, and after two weeks of locating it next to our bed (pictured), where I could reach out and bounce it myself in the middle of the night if I heard restless noises, this past weekend we moved it into the baby nook outside our CLOSED bedroom door. The first night I recalled what deep sleep really is. He slept a four-hour stretch and I was not disturbed by all his little night noises -- snuffles, chirps, sighs, etc.

I know there are as many sleeping arrangements as there are families, but our long-term goal is to have Soren sleeping in his own space and someday soon sleeping through the night. He slept in bed with just me (Jeff moved to a guest bed) for his first month, and for most of his second month he spent part of the night in either the bassinet or the carseat (that's where he first managed to sleep all night without me bringing him into bed to calm him) or the Amby hammock. He turned 12 weeks old before we moved his bed out of our bedroom (and got Jeff back in it!).

Now, for napping. We prefer to have Soren close at hand on our main floor during the day, so we'd been putting him down to nap in his carseat. At one point we even strung it up on ropes from a beam in our living room so we could swing him in it (I know, not in the manufacturer's recommendations!). The swing worked, but someone had to sit nearby and push it every so often to keep the motion going. About a week and a half ago, we introduced two new and improved napping tools: a Fisher Price side-to-side battery-operated swing (purchased used for $12) and another hammock bed that was given to us on a long-term loan by a family that responded to my PTBabies post. Soren loves both, and interestingly prefers the battery-operated swing for his morning nap and the hammock bed for his afternoon nap. He sleeps three-hour stretches during the day in the latter!

The downstairs hammock bed is called a Happy Hangup, and is made in Australia and costs about $130 US. It didn't come with a stand, but the website offers one -- and we have the beam in the living room that works great. I also have to say it adds to the aesthetics of our home in a way that the jury-rigged hanging carseat did not.

So, I could go on and on about sleep -- what we're all getting and what we're not -- but I think it's time for this post to come to an end. Yawn.