Swaddles, Hatch and a Poppy Pillow

Join me as I discuss with new, nurse mama Kailey as we talk about swaddles, the Hatch sound machine and Boppy pillows. These were some of Kailey’s favorite products for the first two months after her son was born.

Episode Transcript:

Welcome back to first breaths of first steps. This is Bev Garrison. I’m here with my friend, Kailey. New mama is her most important title, but she’s also a nurse of about five and a half years, almost four of those in pediatrics. And today we thought we would talk about what her three favorite things were for Lucas in the first couple months of life.

Lucas is 10 weeks old now. Sweet little boy and so Kaylee has shown me. I went over to her house to look at all these new, special fund angled things that she had for her baby and was just amazed. Today we’re going to talk a little bit about swaddles sound machines as well as Boppy pillows and other pillows. Hopefully you guys will find this interesting. Thanks Kailey for joining me today. Thanks for having me.

Talk to me about swaddles. I’m going to tell you girl back in the day, we’re like take the blanket full down the corner, put the head there and wrap that kid, like burrito. That’s all we had right now. As I watch you kind get Lucas ready to go down. I’m like, what the heck is that? Tell me about your favorite kind of sleep swaddle and what it looks like, what it does for you. We actually for the first month or so we just started using these other swaddles. We did do the traditional baby burrito wrap, and sometimes he does like that, but ever since he was in utero, he likes his hand by his face. So we, swaddled. What kind of his hands up compared to on his chest, just because we’ve learned that how he will get to sleeping better. We’re all four get to sleep. But recently over the last couple of weeks we’ve been using, they have different brands and I don’t remember what exactly this brand one. Halo makes one the halo sleep sacks. It just takes the effort or the thinking part of swaddling. Cause my husband and even my mom’s like, I dunno how to swaddle that. And my husband’s an engineer given that stuff. He’s like, what do you mean? How did you get my baby in a burrito like that?

The trying to learn the 1, 2, 3 steps of swaddling or this takes out the, the heart of it. It’s like those yellow books. What did those having a mom brain right now are they there’s like predominance idling for dummy. Right. I know that you and I had talked a little bit about there.

They’re , for lack of better description, a sleep sack and a swaddle combined. Yeah. Yes. It’s like if you think of it as a sleeping bag, with the top part of it cut off. You just it’s flat. It has one. Feet spots. So you put that in the sleeping bag and then you take a speed under there, and then there’s a Velcro piece. Then you’ll put the arms up or down, however your baby is more comfortable and then you pull the left side over. And that there’s a piece of Velcro that attaches to that bottom piece. It’ll stay in place and then you bring the other side over. It wraps them up like a little burrito.

The hassle or trying to get the blanket and lay it out and folding it so that it’s long enough for him or putting the triangle down all of that. It just literally easy it as like 1, 2, 3 just quick and done, and it holds them in with that Velcro. You can keep it loose or tight as you want.

And sometimes what’s easier with that compared to the blankets is the blankets. You don’t always know how. Swaddling them, you think it’s tight and the next thing you know, you have like a little Houdini baby and he’s out of his blanket completely and crying. And you’re like, oh, cause you got out of that swaddle. That wasn’t as tight as I thought. Yeah, for this one, he’s honestly slept, which thankfully we’re to the 10 week mark. He is sleeping longer at night, but he sleeps until he’s hungry. And that’s what wakes him up compared to being woken up because. Yeah, right. I also think that these newer swaddle sleep sack combos might even be a little bit more safe.

I am always talking about safe sleep environment, safe sleep environment. I think. When it’s swaddled with the Velcro like that, you’re right. It’s a little less likely that they’re going to break loose and a loose blanket would be loose or around the face in any sort of way. But also with it, having the SleepSack portion of it, it does keep them warm.

And I think a lot of times that’s. Parents and people are really driven to try and put a blanket on their babies and we’re like nothing loose in the crib flat sheet and the baby. And that’s it. Right? The swaddles are, I feel like a good advent in the fact that they really can stay in place and nothing loose is going to get up and turbine around that head around that face. What we associate more with SIDS. Mahler pieces. Those two pieces that go over each other, if it did, I mean, it would, it’d be really hard to cover his whole face because he’s laying on majority of it. And even if it covered like a piece of his cheek or something, it’s still not going to be as much fabric as a whole blanket from the swaddle.

Cause a lot of blankets are huge obviously, so that you can swaddle them. But sometimes you have access, especially if you have a small baby when they’re first born and you’re like, where do I wrap this? Where does it. I with the traditional blankets, I would fold it over, instead of just a tiny triangle on top, I would fold it almost, even touching the bottom triangle just to make it so that he was laying on most of the fabric compared to it being. Access, like you said. Yeah. That’s a great piece of advice.

Talk to me about this hatch sound machine. This is all I hear you talk about and you love it because it is multifunction. It is not only a sound machine, but it does have a light and you can control the dim setting or the brighter setting. And so you can feed with it. But the other things it’s also controlled by an app. This hatch sound machine is fantastic. Yes. It’s all in one. The reason why, well, a couple of reasons why we ended up getting it or why we ended up using it. We actually had it in his nursery and then we ended up moving it into our room because he’s in our room right now.

It is nice. I don’t even know how many different colors you can choose. I can pull it up. It has a rainbow of colors that you can choose from that has. You can choose red, yellow, orange, blue, purple, any color you want. And then you can also make it super great if you want it, or you can make it dull. We wanted to be able to see him a little bit, but also be able to still sleep while he’s in our room. Can you the room dark to sleep, but we also didn’t want something as bright as our bathroom light or something on from the master. We use that. Sorry, just waking up. Good morning, Mr.

As our nightlight. We use it as a nightlight now for like you said, feeding and all of that, but my friend actually uses it for her. As a, I forget what term you used, safe to wake clock. Yes. Colors change. Then kids know that it’s okay to come out of the room and stuff like that. And I do talk about that in another podcast with some sleep specialists Lindsay Burchfield, and she’s always really given good tips and tricks about sleeping.

You know, hygiene and she’s like, you can coach them. They will, they will do it. They’ll they know the difference between red and green. They understand it. It’s nice that this is a piece of equipment that later down the road, we’ll transition to something you can use as a toddler and even into school age for them.

You can management from your phone and there’s actually a time or two. I don’t know if I told you that web. There is a timer that you, it plays music. It also lullabies or you can choose sounds if you want more white noise, I think there’s rain or a washing machine or dryer on there. They have lullabies you can choose from too. And you manage it all from the app on your phone. You can turn the volume up. You can turn it down, you can brighten the light, you can dim the light. Turn it on, turn it off. You can have the light on without the sound found on without the light vice versa.

Like you’re talking about you can, my friend uses it with her toddler when he wakes up, if the lights red, he knows that it’s not time to leave his room yet. And if it’s green, then he can get up. That’s a nice feature because obviously you don’t have to do it. He just can know if you’re in another room, you just control it from your phone and can change the color.

It’s actually not, it’s not too big. I would say it’s a small, a medium lava lamp, I guess if you think of. Pretty portable, easy to move around. Yeah.

The last thing that I wanted to talk about, and I was a little bit relieved that not much has changed in this realm, but your Boppy pillow, the best nursing pillow ever. Right. Those who don’t know what a Boppy is. A donut pillow, basically a C shaped pillow, and you can put it around your waist and it sits in a position so that your baby can rest on that while you’re nursing. It’s awesome. Highly Lucas. It’s awesome. And. Gives you so much more comfort.

You can put it on the side. If you’re doing a football hold, you can put it across the front. If you’re doing a cradle hold or a cross cradle hold. I think it’s such a great invention. I think too, I’ve heard a lot of moms use. Later as babies are sitting up more like Mr. Lucas, you can put it around with the baby in the middle, in the hole and put it around them while you’re sitting there with them to help balance them on the sides and at the back.

Which I think is a nice feature as well. I’ve also seen some moms put their babies on their tummies with their arms resting up on top of the pillow. Just because it does come around. It helps them to stay balanced when they’re on their belly as well. What do you think about Bobby? Have you seen anything different that you would recommend for breastfeeding positioning or a nursing pillow, or do you think that’s been pretty much what you’ve used?

That’s pretty much what I’ve used. I think one thing that you’ve learned real quick as a new mom is how heavy your babies end up being, even if they’re only six packs and having just that support of your elbow, because me and my forearms and biceps were so sore just from holding them in that position.

When you’re tired and you’re trying to hold your arms up and your muscles are sore, it’s such a nice convenience to have that around you. And then you can rest easily. It’s one less thing you have to think about or worry. Build up your strength with your baby, right. And Kailey is also a health and wellness coach that body positioning, I think it. Really important that you mentioned that, right? When you’re nursing, you want to bring baby up to you and not you down to baby and doing that pillow right underneath baby at your abdomen really does help to support that so that your body mechanics are good and you’re not paying the price being sore or uncomfortable down the road.

You’re already. Yeah, exactly is helpful. Exactly. Well, Kailey, thank you today for highlighting your three favorite things from zero to two months. I love them as well. I’ve learned that while you guys have so many new, fantastic things out there on the market that can really help moms and Lucas, little sweet baby.

If you found the information in this podcast helpful today, I want Infor more information about the products that we discussed. You can click on this podcast description and download a transcript. Also, if you’re interested in working with me with your baby from first breaths to first steps, you can also reach out to me @ bevgarrison.com until next time, be well.

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