I received product compliments of Ollie World and Elfin Marketing in order to facilitate this post — all opinions are my own. This post may also contain affiliate links, meaning any purchases made using these links will earn Taz + Belly a small commission. You can read more about our affiliate relationships here.
When Ella was born, I had no concept of how well she would sleep. I had never had to care for anyone other than myself and I wasn’t prepared for how difficult operating on only a few hours might be. Fortunately, Josh is a much better middle of the night parent than I am and he helped keep me from coming apart at the seams while we figured this parenting gig out. By the time she was five weeks old, Ella was sleeping eleven hours a night and we were feeling pretty good about ourselves.
When Sophie was born, the only expectation that we had, was that she would do exactly what Ella had done before her. We were extremely lucky when this proved to be the case, but I have plenty of friends whose second child was wildly different.
When Polly was born, we began to worry that the third time would not be a charm. After years of bragging about how we made excellent sleepers, Josh joked that we were about to find out if we were really good parents or just really lucky. We did find that breastfed babies have completely different sleep patterns than their formula fed counterparts (just speaking from our own experience here) and we struggled with broken sleep for the first several weeks. There were moments when I wanted to give up and shove a bottle in her mouth, but I knew I would regret it if I did. After a few nights of desperation, I decided to come up with a plan.
Several months before delivery, we received some really fun packages from a few brand partners to try — the Ollie Swaddle was one of them. We had velcro sleepers with the big girls, so the concept wasn’t new to us, but this one looks and feels completely different. In the first few weeks at home, I mostly swaddled her with a hospital blanket or one of the million muslin blankets we got as gifts. They all worked fine, but we weren’t getting any sleep anyway, so it was honestly hard to know if that would make a difference.
After a few weeks, struggling with getting Polly onto some sort of regular routine, I decided to research sleeping strategies and stumbled across a gold mine. I felt a little ridiculous spending money on something when, in practice, I knew exactly what to do. Sometimes, when you’re sleep deprived and second guessing yourself, just having someone go through the steps with you can be a huge help. Enter Taking Cara Babies. I purchased Cara’s newborn class (not sponsored, I paid cash money – ha!) after seeing a few friends talk about it on Instagram and I never regretting it for a single second. She told me all the things I needed to hear (cuddling your baby is fine, she’s too little to have a schedule, this too shall pass) and helped to reinforce all of my maternal instincts. Implementing her suggestions were easy and within a few days I could see how this was making me calmer and more sure about my parenting choices, when it comes to sleep. A few days after I completed her class, she shared a few Instagram Stories about swaddling and soothing babies and I recognized the swaddle blanket she was using — the Ollie Swaddle!
I went back through our baby gear and dug the Ollie Swaddle out of storage (it had been quite a while since we’d given it a shot) and promptly wrapped our burrito for bed. I swear this thing has magic powers, because it immediately helped our evening routine. The fabric is soft and stretchy, but it doesn’t have so much give that she can get out. Unlike the other swaddles we were using, this one wraps a few inches below baby’s shoulders, so you don’t have to worry about extra fabric around their face. I can get a super tight fit and still give Polly plenty of room to breath, and the extra length means the swaddle will grow with her. I’m not looking forward to learning to sleep without the swaddle, but I’m hoping we still have a month or two before I have to figure that out!
For comparison, here is a photo I snapped of Polly in the Ollie Swaddle, right after we got home from the hospital. We were celebrating both of our September babies and got Ella to pose with Polly in their party hats. Polly wasn’t sleeping in the Ollie because it was still a little too big for her (see how it wasn’t tight enough to stay down on her shoulders?), but she sure was adorable trying it out!
Thank you, Ollie World + Taking Cara Babies, for saving my sanity and giving me all the good nights’ sleep.
