We've overcome our paranoia...

well mostly anyway. When we brought Eli & Emerson home from the NICU we were among the most paranoid parents in the history of the universe. We look back at ourselves now and wonder how those around us didn't do some sort of intervention. My friends merely did as we requested and never made me feel like a crazy person, and I think my family made jokes but we mostly just ignored them. Plus we lived thousands of miles away, so that helped with their inability to stage a full out intervention (plus it wouldn't have worked we were to paranoid and scared).

We were worried about any kind of SIDS risk, or frankly just any risk at all. Plus the NICU nurses did an excellent job of scaring us silly of even swaddling our children so for the first few days of their lives we put them in a crib like this.

No swaddling, no nothing.

I joked with Marcus that they had the prison cell of cribs. I will say that this no swaddling idea lasted about two days, before I just couldn't take it anymore. NICU nurse advice or not, putting two tiny babies down without swaddling went against all of my natural instincts (and I didn't feel like I had many so I really clung to the ones I did). So Marcus relented and agreed because really don't they just look kind of sad, plopped in the crib with nothing and we moved on to this...

Wrapped in blankets, but with their arms out. Again the arms out thing was on the advice of the NICU nurses. So we swaddled from the waist. (Sometimes I look back at ourselves and shake my head). But the blankets often unraveled and we feared they would suffocate so we adapted once again to these...

some velcro sleep things. But again notice we left the arms out, and we also put up a breathable bumper. 

As they got older we did allow them on extra blanket. That blue blanket is Eli's lovey but that's it nothing else. Now I provided all of this background information because these days Emerson requires a lot of "things" before she goes to sleep. When we tell her it's nap time or bedtime she goes around collecting all assortments of things and usually singing as she does it. Her pig and blanket of course. A few books, some other stuffed animals, her babies etc. etc. I would like to show what Emerson's crib looks like these days...

Ta-da! 

The most hilarious and adorable thing about this is she gathers these things around her and then plops right in the middle of them and goes to sleep. Of course Marcus and I go in often and move stuff away from her mouth and face. I can't help but wonder if the early years of crib loneliness have caused her to go a bit overboard in this department. Although the problem with all of this stuff is she often loses the things she needs the most like her blanket in the midst of the chaos. So she'll cry for her "blanket' and we'll have go in a dig it out. Crazy girl. She cracks me up. 

See how far we've come. From stark prison cribs too... well I'm not sure what this is, but to this.