The Farrell Family: Sleeping Babies

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Sleeping Babies

So I was contemplating this the other night as I said a blessing over my sleeping sweet girls before I went to bed myself. When they are tiny babies, the Academy of Pediatrics recommends you have them sleep on their backs. For one reason or another stats have shown there is less risk of SIDS if you have them sleep on their backs. I don't know about any of you but my girls hated to sleep on their backs as tiny babies. They had very immature digestive systems and had horribly gassy tummies and mild reflux. Sleeping on their backs just hurt. So, at about 2 and a half months Jason convinced me that it was better for them to sleep on their tummies and get some sleep rather than put them on their backs and them get little to no sleep. So we did and just didn't tell our pediatrician (or many others to keep from being judged as bad parents). That solved the problem and before we knew it they were sleeping for 3-4 hours at a time rather than 1-2! Life has been great since then...we have actually gone an entire year now of sleeping 10-12 hours per night, bliss! But anyway, back to what I was contemplating, I go into their room now and 9 times out of 10 one (or both) of them are sleeping, yep, you guessed it, on their backs! Now that the risk of SIDS has dramatically decreased (I don't even know if it's an issue after 12 months) they sleep on their backs. And not only are they sleeping on their backs, they enjoy it! It tickled me a little bit to think about how hard I tried to get them to sleep on their backs when they were little bitties and how nervous I was the first couple of nights I actually put them down on their tummies and now that it doesn't matter how they sleep, they choose to sleep on their backs! Oh the irony! Below are a few pics of my little back sleepers (sorry so many, I just love sleeping baby pics!) God bless you all!