How does being a mum of a six, seven week old compare first time to second time round? It is completely different. And certainly I had heard people say that. And a lot of people, I think, do say second time round is easier.
Certainly so far, that’s been my experience. I think if you are a first time mum, it’s going to sound completely insane to to to imagine that a night feed might actually be the highlight of your day. I do not believe that both parents should ever be up at night at the same time.
Unless, of course, you’ve got a toddler who’s up at the same time as a newborn. But, you know, I think there’s this crazy thing, and particularly with your first born baby, you know, that your husband kind of gets up at 2 a.m. with you, and I don’t know what he does. He changes the nappy and you do the breastfeed.
I can remember doing stupid things like that. Welcome to Sense by Meg Fora, the podcast that’s brought to you by Parent Sense, the app that takes guesswork out of parenting. If you’re a new parent, then you are in good company.
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This is Sense by Meg Fora, and I’m your host as we navigate the first few years of life. As you know, if you’ve been subscribing to our podcast, which I hope that you all are, and we often track the journey of a mum and her baby through the first few years of life. And in the first season, we tracked Cassidy with little Max.
And if you do want to go back and listen to your baby’s stage of development, do go back and have a look at those. And in this particular season, which is season five, we are tracking alongside Julia. And Julia is the mum of two.
And she has a little seven week old, Aurelia. So welcome back, Julia. It’s always good to see you.
Thanks, Meg. It’s funny when people say a mum of two, I’m sort of wondering who they’re talking about. I’m still mentally acclimatizing to that fact.
Yes, it is you. And isn’t it amazing how much more perspective you have second time round? Because in the first time, I think you’re so much in the drown. I mean, how does how does being the mum of a seven week old compare first time to second time round? It is completely different.
And certainly I had heard people say that. And a lot of people, I think, do say second time round is easier. Certainly so far, that’s been my experience.
I think with the first baby for the first six months, I think I was just in complete shock, total survival mode, just lurching from one night feed to the next, trying to stay alive. And the second time around, I just find it so much easier to cope, I think. And I’m able to enjoy her so much more.
You know, it sounds really sad to say, but I’m not sure that I could really enjoy Santee for a long time because I was just really struggling. Like I think most moms do the first time round. And this time I’m really savoring the time with Aurelia and especially our alone time together.
I really enjoy the moments we can be by ourselves and really connecting. So it’s a completely different experience from the first time around. No question.
Yeah, it really is. And, you know, I can remember, I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, but with my second born, which was a whole lot easier. Look, she was a much easier temperament in general.
And she really did night feeds for a very short period of time because she was a settled baby. And our settled babies only really do night feeds. I mean, they can start to sleep through as early as six, seven weeks.
They really do. And so she was heading towards sleeping through and I could feel it. And I think she was probably about five weeks old.
And I got up for a feed at about three o’clock in the morning. And at the time we lived in Noordoek up on the mountainside. And I can remember holding her in the windows, overlooking all the lights below me out towards the Atlantic Ocean and realizing there were people inside each of those lights.
And just savoring this alone time with her. Like I felt like I was in a village and yet I was completely on my own. And I just loved it.
And, you know, I remember thinking to myself, I’m going to take a mental photograph of this because I want it to be one of the most precious moments of my life. And it was. I mean, I just I really loved those those moments alone with her at night.
Yeah. And I think if you are a first time mom, it’s going to sound completely insane to to to imagine that a night feed might actually be the highlight of your day. But in fact, for me, I’ve realized this week that so just contextually my it’s obviously chaotic with another child in the home.
So and it’s school holidays. So things are a little bit wild here anyway. And but also I’m finding I don’t have pretty much any downtime in the day.
Unfortunately, my kind of maternity leave situation hasn’t worked out well. So I’m having to work pretty much in all of her naptimes in the day, which, you know, isn’t ideal, but it is what it is. And it means that at nighttime, when I’m up sort of twice a night to feed her and also find this with with bath and bedtime as well, that’s the only time I’m really having to focus on her with no distractions and complete peace and quiet.
And I actually have realized that I really love it. Yeah. No, it is tiring.
It’s wonderful. It is. It’s absolutely precious time.
And, you know, I think it kind of brings us around to that kind of conundrum of of early parenting that I mean, you know, there’s that phrase, you know, the days are long and the years are short. And it is like that. Like, it’s such a conundrum.
There’s so much that you are wishing away, like, oh, gosh, I just wish that we’d get through and they wouldn’t be colicky or just wish that they’d be sleeping through the night or, you know, oh, the next phase is weaning or I’m going to teach them to self-soothe. So you think about all these things that are very forward thinking, you know, and kind of progressing them towards independence. And yet in that exact moment, you’re going, no, no, no, don’t grow up too fast.
I just know that it’s going too fast. And, you know, already you’ve probably she’s probably lost that newborn newborn smell in her hair, you know, and that happens so fast. And you can feel it.
Oh, it’s just it’s absolutely flying by. And I’m so conscious of it and so aware of it, which is another reason why I’m really just trying to to hang on to all of those moments. You know, even when it’s tough, you know, with the perspective of a second child, you can cope with the difficult moments because, you know, it’ll end.
Yeah. Yeah. And you do.
And the sleep deprivation, obviously, is something that you you know, won’t last forever. And you’ve got a little bit more context. But how are you coping with your sleep deprivation? Is it an issue? Um, you know, again, I find it much easier this time around.
I mean, I was for all intents and purposes awake for three years with Santiago because the man just refused to sleep. So I have a certain amount of practice. And maybe there’s a bit of muscle memory there.
But I think also the first time around, I learned the things that worked for me. So something that and this is going to be so irritating to hear from those people. But the only thing that really gets me going in the day if I wake up and I’m absolutely exhausted is exercising.
And for me, you know, this week, certainly I’ve found my groove again. I’ve started walking my dogs on the mountain again, going for hikes, doing a little bit of running. I’m going back to gym tomorrow, which I’m borderline excited about.
I mean, again, that’s probably not fun to hear. But, you know, just getting back in my routine and knowing that movement and being outside ideally is the thing that actually wakes me up. So I never regret it.
Even if I have to drag myself up the mountain in the morning. Afterwards, I always feel better and more energized. And that gets me through.
I mean, I’ll always crash at 4 p.m., but I would crash anyway whether I had done the exercise or not. So I find that’s actually the thing that works best for me. Yeah.
And then just a couple of other tips for parents. You know, one of the things that I think is very important is that we share the load. I’ve always been a big advocate of having a second set of hands around for some sleeps.
And let’s just talk about what that means. I do not believe that both parents should ever be up at night at the same time. Unless, of course, you’ve got a toddler who’s up at the same time as a newborn.
But, you know, I think there’s this crazy thing, and particularly with your first born baby, you know, that your husband kind of gets up at 2 a.m. with you. And I don’t know what he does. He changes the nappy and you do the breastfeed.
I can remember doing stupid things like that. And then very quickly afterwards, realizing that this is the most unsensical thing ever. So, you know, one of the things that I say is always choose a feed between 8 and 8, 8 p.m. and 8 a.m., that your partner will at least assist with changing the nappy and just doing everything.
So that might be that you go to bed at 8 and the 10 o’clock feed, you stay in bed. Your husband literally picks up the baby, brings it to you, breastfeed, he changes the nappy. He does everything and you pretty much sleep through the feed.
Or the other way, which is what the one I did is I did all of the night feeds in anything from 8 p.m. through until 5 a.m. I did. And in the early morning feed, he would always just bring the baby, feed on me, take the baby away and just change the nappy, do everything else, play with them because it was morning and let me sleep until he left for work. And that was an absolute godsend, just knowing that I had this few extra hours early in the morning.
So that for me really, really worked well. The other thing is that you can also try and sleep in the day when your baby sleeps. And I want to talk to you a little bit about your juggle being with the working.
But I do want to say that a lot of parents get quite irritated when people say sleep when the baby sleeps, because actually that’s when you do the laundry, it’s when you clean, it’s when you read to the other child, it’s when you do your shop. There’s a million things that you try and fit in there. But I think a lot of those things, if it isn’t optional, like for instance, scrolling through Instagram or folding the laundry, like just leave it, you know, just really grab those sleeps because those things make you sane.
And then the last thing that I do say is that on the weekend, try and get a sleep until 10 o’clock in the morning, one of the days, like where your partner literally just allows you to just sleep and brings the baby, brings the baby and carries the load. And I think those type of sharings of the load actually get you through those early months because sleep deprivation is an absolute killer. It really is.
It feels awful. Yeah, it really it can. It can feel like you’re going to die from a lack of sleep, I suppose.
And in a sense, some people could. But I think, you know, two things there. The one is that certainly for me, I find a morning sleep is incredibly restorative.
So if I can sleep from, say, five to eight, a hundred percent real sort of six to eight, that can totally set me up for the day. I can really survive on just with that little sip of sleep. That’s almost my nap.
And the other thing is that the best advice I ever received, I think I read it somewhere at some point during sort of Santee’s first few months was never, ever do anything during a nap, a child’s nap time that you can’t do when they’re awake. I’m sorry that you can do when they’re awake. I love that, you know, and often that is a nap because obviously you can’t nap while your child is awake.
And it means you don’t actually have to fold the laundry because you can, in fact, do that while your child is awake. And sometimes it’s a workout, whatever it is. And I really take that to heart.
I absolutely believe that. And often it means I will sit down and be on the couch and do nothing, even if it’s just for 45 minutes, because I can’t do that when when the baby needs my attention. So I think that was the best thing I ever heard.
I love that. And, you know, there’s a lot of science around cat napping for adults, you know, that we can we can actually take 15 minutes and just be restored by it. So but I do notice something that you said, which is a little worrying.
And I feel for you. And that is and it’s very common for many moms. And that is that you back at work essentially during those, you know, doing email during those naps.
So how did that transpire? Did you plan a maternity leave? Yeah, so I mean, look, I’m in the fortunate slash unfortunate position of being effectively a freelancer. So I do have control over my own time. Obviously, the downside of that is that when you’re not working, you don’t have an income.
But it also means that I don’t you know, I’m not necessarily having the luxury of having someone to replace me if I if I am not working in a, you know, maternity cover sense. So we did try to plan for that with my my bigger clients, but it just hasn’t worked out to it’s just it’s too busy. And there’s a sort of few factors that I’m not essentially in a position to to take my hands off the wheel completely.
And I don’t want to because, you know, I love my work and I’m I’m really dedicated to it. And I don’t want things to kind of spin off into chaos while I’m off. So, you know, it’s partly my personality and partly circumstantial.
So it’s very it’s very tricky. You know, ideally, I want to have more rest. So I’m working with my clients to figure out a way that I’m really only working on the kind of high priority projects.
But it’s it’s just one of those things the first time around. Luckily, I effectively let go of some of my bigger clients. So I had six full months of being off when Santi was born, which was amazing.
And I really got to spend dedicated time with him. And this time is just a little bit more tricky. But then again, it is easier.
So it’s kind of not the end of the world. And I think it probably is the reality for a lot of moms that they don’t spend as much time on maternity leave the second time around as they they would have. I was just about to say that.
I mean, I think that, you know, we have this ideal vision of taking off the three months at least, and then we just don’t. We stick work in. You know, I think it’s a difficult thing because, you know, part of me being older and having the benefit of hindsight goes those first three months and actually the first year.
But the first three months are so precious, like just in the biggest scheme of things, let everything go. You know, there’s there is that sense. But there’s the other part, which is I exactly like you.
I loved my work. I had started the BabySense company when I had my third baby, Emily. And I’ll never forget, I had a partner at the time who had started the company with me.
And so I went on maternity leave and I said, look, I’ll be back in three months time. I am taking this time. And about four weeks into my maternity leave, she emailed me or phoned me and she said, I’ve decided I’m no longer going to be part of BabySense.
So I’m giving you the company back, like literally giving you the shares back. I’m out. And so I was back at the Rockfest at six weeks old.
And when she was six weeks old and yeah, it was really, really hard. And, you know, it’s interesting because my husband last night, literally we were having a brine. We had friends around and he said BabySense was our fourth child because we had always planned to have four children.
And he said, yep, BabySense was our fourth child. And it was like that. I mean, it just it did become it was almost like Ems had a twin that was growing up with her because, you know, I was splitting myself between her and and obviously I had the older two, but between the business as well.
So it is the reality for many women. So absolutely. And then tell us a little bit about developmentally what’s happened this week.
Well, the smiles are now, I would say, officially happening, which is nice. She’s still a little bit schnook with them, but I’ve had some proper smiles this week, which is amazing. I mean, there’s nothing that really kind of gives you a boost for getting through the next hour of the day, like a really beautiful smile from your child.
So that’s divine. I absolutely love that. And we’ve had a few milestones in the sense that she’s had her vaccinations and six week vaccinations, and she was amazing.
She coped so well. She gave a squawk and then promptly fell asleep. So we didn’t even have to deal with floods of tears from either of us, which was good.
And I had my six week gynae checkup, which was all clear. So, you know, two really nice kind of health checkboxes ticked off for this phase of our of our lives together. So that’s all good and all done.
And yeah, she’s just it’s that that thing of her slowly discovering the world and, you know, being more engaged with the world around her when she’s playing and when she’s on her playmat. And, you know, yesterday it was a lovely warm afternoon. So we went and sat outside and I put her under a tree and we did the kind of playmat time out there, which I always think that she she kind of relishes that outdoor time, which is a bit tricky in winter.
But we you know, we do our best. It’s not so hard in Cape Town. And, you know, I think the outdoor times are important for her.
And yeah, she’s in terms of her routine. She’s really thriving. I mean, she’s continuing to eat really well.
She goes down beautifully for her naps in the day. I do remember that going sideways at four months with Santi. So I’m not holding up too much hope that that’s a permanent situation.
But certainly for now, she’s sleeping, going down beautifully in the day. Still struggling a little bit with that that bedtime situation. She will either go down easily and then pop up at 45 minutes, which is manageable because we’ll either sort of settle her or give her a little top up feed or something like that.
But it’s the nights where she will kind of start to cry as I put her down, that becomes a little bit tricky. And then I’m having to sort of sit with her for for a longer time to kind of settle her. So those nights aren’t ideal.
And that’s more often than not, to be honest. And I’m trying to just kind of ride it out. But that’s that’s probably the trickiest thing at the moment.
Yeah, so it is. And it’s so fascinating how that six week mark and every mom who’s listening to this is will have gone through exactly those milestones. It’s a six weeks vaccines.
If you live in South Africa, eight weeks, if you’re elsewhere, they are, you know, your gyne check. And then, of course, the more consistent smiling, which is, you know, a really, really special thing. I don’t know if you’re aware of mirror neurons.
They’re the most amazing set of pathways that happen through human brains. So when you are watching something, even if you’re watching something without sound, like on TV and you see somebody’s emotion and the emotion that they are feeling behind that facial expression triggers a certain neural pathway in their brain. And when you look at their face, it triggers exactly the same neural pathway through your brain.
So if somebody like you starts to look really sad and, you know, and you and you can see it and you can’t even hear the sound, you know, maybe it’s a silent movie or whatever. And, you know, you can really feel that that pain and it can actually, you know, lead you to feel like you’re going to cry, you know. And it’s incredible in human beings.
It’s called mirror neurons and exactly the same pathways pass through each of our heads or, you know, each of our brains. And that’s what happens when she smiles. You know, as she smiles, you know that there’s some joy and delight.
And so then you smile back and it triggers exactly the same neural pathways. So it’s a very precious time. And like you say, you know, it kind of fuels you for the next hour or two because, you know, it fills up your emotional tank, which is really special and, you know, releases all of these wonderful positive neurotransmitters.
So smiling is really important. If people’s babies are not smiling by nine weeks, fairly consistently in response to faces and and, you know, kind of, you know, events or sounds or interactions. That’s when we do get worried.
It’s one of the milestones where, you know, I really hang I really hang my hat on that milestone. Like it’s a big milestone. It’s probably one of our most important.
And it’s also so super hardwired that almost every baby globally smiles at six weeks, you know, as long as they’ve had social interactions. So, you know, it’s exactly what we’d expect, that she’s starting to give you more consistent smiles, which is really amazing. The other thing that happens at six weeks is we get the peak of crying.
So she’s now coming down that curve now. And so she’s now that early evening fussing is going to get a whole lot better. But there are things that you can do.
What are you busy? What are you doing at the moment in terms of getting her to settle when you put her down in the evening? This episode is brought to us by ParentSense, the all in one baby and parenting app that help you make the most of your baby’s first year. Don’t you wish someone would just tell you everything you need to know about caring for your baby, when to feed them, how to wean them and why they won’t sleep? ParentSense app is like having a baby expert on your phone guiding you to parent with confidence. Get a flexible routine, daily tips and advice personalized for you and your little one.
Download ParentSense app now from your app store and take the guesswork out of parenting. What are you busy? What are you doing at the moment in terms of getting her to settle when you put her down in the evening? So so part of it might be the fact that she is sort of falling asleep at the feed, which obviously isn’t ideal. So we what I do is that the second half of the of the afternoon, I watch her nap.
So I usually get her nap for maybe an hour and a half. And I try to get up by about half past four with an eye on a kind of six p.m. bedtime. So we’re looking at roughly 90 minutes, maybe 80 minutes of a wake window.
So we’ll play a little bit and then I’ll start the bath with her, which generally she she enjoys unless she’s hungry and then she screams all the time because she’s only sort of due for the feed at about six o’clock. And then I will after her bath, I’ll put her in her in her onesie and then I’ll usually swaddle her and then we will go back to the room and I’ve got the lullaby going and the low lights and she gets her bottle. And then unfortunately, inevitably, she will fall asleep by the end of the bottle.
And I rock her and put her into bed. So at that point, she will, unless she’s very tired. Like last night, she screamed the whole way through her bath because I think she was hungry.
She will also generally pass out. And and that’s when we get the 45 minutes later waking. But more often than not, she, when I lay her down, will start to fuss or cry.
And and I sort of struggle to to get her to settle properly for, you know, sometimes half an hour, sometimes an hour. So I suspect that maybe falling asleep while she’s feeding might have something to do with it. And obviously, in general, I know it’s not an ideal thing.
So that’s that’s kind of the routine at the moment that we’re dealing with. Yeah. So I’m going to make a couple of little suggestions there.
Do you use the ParentSense app? Because the routine on the ParentSense app right down at the middle of the of the ParentSense homepage, you’ll see a little heart that says routine. And the routine in there is actually a very clever routine. So what it does is it works out your what time she should wake at the end of the day and then what time she can actually have her last feeds and so on.
My suggestion is because her wake time for this age is actually 50 to 60 minutes. I would say 90s a little on the long side, and it would explain why she’s really falling asleep in that last feed of the day. So my suggestion is to pull that back to 80 minutes and no longer.
So, you know, I mean, even 70, you know, 60 to 80 minutes is the absolute longest you would ever want her to be awake. So if she is going down at six o’clock, let’s just say, for instance, you would then want her to be awake at about ten to five. So, you know, at the latest, you may be maybe quarter to five.
And so I think waking her earlier than that from her last sleep is potentially an issue. So I would definitely try that. And then you’ve only got an hour and kind of ten minutes, maybe an hour and 20 minutes max to to actually do bath, bed, feed.
And it’s like, you know, it’s a lot to fit into that hour. And what I suggest doing there is doing a little bit of a feed before bath. So normally, if you were breastfeeding, I would say one side.
But because you’re pumping and you’re expressing and giving her a bottle, you can give her like a small, like 30 ml, like little bit of milk just because you want to get her through bath happily. Then you give her the bath, a little baby massage after the bath. Again, in the app, we’ve actually got the baby massage instructions on the play screen.
So you just have to just tick in there and you’ll see some of the massage strokes. And then you do both sides again if you are feeding or you do a full bottle, like a full feed. So she’s actually would have had almost like a little bit of a topper.
And what I do suggest is I suggest not swaddling her until kind of the last 10 minutes of that feed. So if you were breastfeeding, that means giving her one side before bath, then after bath, one side, then swaddle and then the other side. If she is bottle fed, I would just keep the last 30 ml, take her off, swaddle her up and then give it to her.
And and the reason for that is that if you swaddle her again, the fact that she’s very tired plus, you know, because she’s got a long wake time, plus the fact that you are swaddling at the beginning of of the feed could mean that she’s just in too much of a damp state. So she’s falling asleep. Yeah, it’s too comfortable.
She’s just too comfortable. So I would definitely do that. And, you know, you can even if people are battling with their little ones falling asleep during feeds, you can actually uncover their feet or even kind of almost not tickle their feet, but like just touch their feet so that they do actually stay awake because you want them to feed really well at that feed.
And then in the last 10 minutes, deep swaddle, finish the feed, little bit of rocking or movement and then down for the night. And then I think I mentioned it last week, just sitting with her until she’s gone through that hypnagogic startle. So for 15 minutes, sitting with her, patting her, putting on her side, whatever it takes, getting her all the way through.
I’m not a big fan at this stage of picking her up, rocking her, you know, putting her in a sling, anything like that, because there’s no point. She’s going to cry whether she’s lying down or whether she’s in your arms. So rather have her lying down and then just actually, you know, kind of pat her and shush her and see whether or not she’ll settle that way.
Yeah. So see if that works. Yeah, that’s that’s actually very useful.
I will try that tonight for sure. Yeah, no, it does make a difference. And you can also pop on some white noise as well.
You know, so all good ideas. And are you, is she in a sleep position, like a docker tot or a sleepy head or a nurture one cushion or is she flat on the mattress out of interest? So at the moment she’s in a docker tot and I tend to to switch her side so that she is not kind of lying in one position all day long. And she seems comfortable that she’s very, very tall, though.
So I suspect that the docker tot’s not going to last much longer. And then I will pop her straight onto the mattress. I have got some little wedges.
I guess that’s a sleep position that are like Velcro to the to the base. And I know I use those with Santia, but when he grew out of the docker tot so that he could be again a little bit of an angle on either side. So that would be my my plan for when we get to that point.
Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about the sleep positions because it’s it’s super contentious. And, you know, a lot of moms have questions around, are they safe? Should I be using them? How beneficial are they and how do I get rid of them? Those are kind of the big questions.
So the first thing that is important to note is that, you know, the American Academy of Pediatrics and almost any kind of advisory body is going to say absolutely nothing in your cut. So, you know, and I think that’s very confusing for parents because, you know, we use these strategies and yet at the same time, our advisory bodies are giving us a message saying don’t don’t do it. So I suppose as a health care professional, I need to hold that line as well.
Having said that, I do think they are very useful and and they can help little ones to sleep because they give them a boundary. And it’s that kind of little bit of, you know, kind of a boundary around that, whether it is the nurture one cushion, which is one I used, or obviously the docker tot and sleepy heads. So just a couple of things.
I think I like the fact that you’re changing her sides. She shouldn’t sleep all the way on her side. She should be kind of almost on her back side because you definitely don’t want her rolling onto her tummy because then they do pose a SIDS risk.
So that’s the first thing you definitely want to make sure of. And the second thing is that the minute they’re rolling, which is somewhere between about 14 weeks and kind of 20, 20 weeks, you should not have them in there anymore at all. They should then be on a flat mattress, that is for sure.
So how do you do that transition? You know, and I think that’s a really important question that a lot of people want to know is like if my baby has been using a docker tot or a sleepy head and now I want to put them straight onto a flat mattress. How do I make the transition? So one of the nice ways to do it is to take either the wedges that you have already got on the bottom mattress or if other parents don’t have wedges, is to take a long towel and to roll it into a long sausage and to create a horseshoe with it and put that horseshoe down onto the bed, but without a sheet on and then take your fitted sheet and the fitted sheets that I like are all the kind of knit fabrics, the interlock, put that over it. And so you’ve almost got like this little bit of a hollowed out area with a mattress over it.
And that’s slightly better than actually having a, you know, a docker tot or a sleepy head or nurture one cushion, because obviously it has less suffocation risk because it’s not loose. It’s, you know, it’s underneath the sheet. So that’s quite a good way.
And for those of you who don’t want to spend the money on a docker tot, sleepy head or nurture one cushion, that’s also actually a great strategy that you can use right from the get go. It’s just almost positioning them with a with a towel and then putting the sheet over it and don’t make it too thick and padded. But yeah, see whether or not that works.
That’s a very practical idea. I wish I’d known that the first time around, because I didn’t have a docker tot. And I was sort of tricky to to position him.
But yeah, that that is a very good idea, I think. And also it may well coincide, you know, transitioning her to to being on the mattress on her own without the docker tot may well coincide with kind of moving her into a sleep sack as opposed to the swaddle as well, which obviously, you know, the arms out and it’s a whole different story. So that’s when, you know, definitely kind of don’t want anything in the cot.
And then there I can really see the logic of of having a cot that’s completely devoid of of other kind of moving parts. So I do get that logic, too. Yeah.
And that usually happens. Swaddling usually you move them out between about 12 and 14, 15 weeks. You know, that’s kind of.
And you know, I think swaddling holds so much value in the early days because it does prevent colic. It does, you know, dampen their state. It is just it’s lovely proprioception.
It’s reenacts the womb world. But as soon as they’re rolling, they can actually unravel from it. And it makes people quite fearful because then their hands start to bat their face and they knock the dummy out and they scratch the ears.
So what I always say is start swaddling under the arms as soon as they are rolling so that they’ve still got the deep pressure around their chest and then their arms out and then, like you said.
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