The best baby sleep clothes

Our babies always had trou­ble sleep­ing. The first one didn’t sleep through the night until he was six months old (though now he could sleep through an earth­quake). The sec­ond one slept like a dream for three or four months and has woken up at least once every night since then.

We swad­dled and breast fed and cra­dled and sang and walked and did every­thing we could to get them to sleep. Of all those things, what helped the most was swad­dling. Now, swad­dling is a bit of an art. You need a big blan­ket (like the one you stole from the hos­pi­tal), and you need to be none too gen­tle with how tightly you fold your baby up. Invari­ably we wound up using a blan­ket that was too small, or our boys would man­age to get an arm out (with which to whack myself over the head, Daddy!).

But we found some­thing that helped. The Mir­a­cle Blan­ket is a blan­ket designed for swad­dling. It has spe­cial flaps for the arms and a pocket for the feet, and it is truly mirac­u­lous. It comes in two sizes (last time we checked) and really does work. Don’t be thrown off by their “As Seen on TV” style web site.

The other prob­lem we have run into with baby sleep­ing is how cold it gets at night, espe­cially when we lived North, and dur­ing win­ter. At some point (ask your pedi­a­tri­cian when) you can put a blan­ket in the crib with your baby, but even then it will be a while before they get the idea of snug­gling under it to stay warm. Enter the Sleep­Sack. We bought these in two sizes, too, and both our boys used them. Now with the sec­ond boy, we have just ordered some Sleep­Sacks for tod­dler sized kids, which include foot holes.

These two items are a bit expen­sive for what you get, but we love them so.