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Friday, February 29, 2008

With a little help from my friends

Praise the lord for friends! Most recently, Calvin and Oliver's mom recommended the Miracle Blanket. I was skeptical but game, as I always am with new things to buy because you never know.

And this airplane shaped product arrived and I tried it right out and it was like a scene out of a movie: fussy Jacob was lying on the bed and then I snuggled him into this blanket and he actually smiled at me as I wrapped the last folds around him. He napped contentedly in it twice. Then, last night, he fell asleep on my chest on the couch as usual, but when I transferred him to our bed, I left him wrapped up and put him flat on the mattress, where he kept on sleeping (this never happens) until 2 am. Wunderbar! He did have to come back up on my chest in the middle of the night since after his feeding he was more awake and resisted the swaddling, but he stayed in it most of the night anyway, as I attempted to get him used to the feeling. And, generally, he seemed happier all bundled up. Hooray!

Of course, having him next to me as opposed to on me in bed raised a new set of concerns for me: when he is sleeping on my or the husband's chest, we can assure that he is still breathing (and he does stop periodically, as all babies do, the husband who works at the children's hospital assures me). Having this assurance is very comforting. When he is next to me in bed, I can still hear him breathing, but the assurance is not as tactile, which was alarming for a while. And then when I considered having him in his own bed, where I almost certainly won't be able to hear him (even though his bed is currently at the foot of ours), I got a little worried. You see, my deep-seated fear of SIDS continues to rule my life. I think I am particularly afraid of this condition because it goes against all I like to believe about medicine (my own experiences notwithstanding), that we have the ability to determine causes and create solutions to most medical issues, thereby eliminating most of the worry about them. However, SIDS seems like witchcraft almost, a condition without a known cause, without a known cure, surrounded by supposition and theories and very little hard data. It's like a modern-day curse, with just about as much sense to it as a curse would have had. For a control freak like me, this is alarming in the extreme.

So I'm just going to have to get over this, but it's going to take a little while, people!

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