Crib blanket bingo

Over at Zoot's site this week, she talked about an incident with her daughter where she could have been badly injured because she did not take the necessary parenting precautions.

I can sympathize with her as I had one of those moments myself this weekend.

We are currently trying to figure out a way to put Jack down for naps without swaddling him. At night, we use the Miracle Blanket and we get a truly miraculous 8-9 hours of sleep out of him. But for naps, I am worried we will stunt his growth by keeping him wrapped up all the time.

It even says on the Miracle Blanket package not to swaddle for more than 10 hours in a 24-hour period. And I am all for following directions. Stop here on red. Don't covet thy neighbor's wife. No carrying a concealed weapon.

So I had the bright idea that we would wrap Jack's arms in a receiving blanket, but leave his legs free! Brilliant!

So we fold the blanket into a nice rectangle shape and we wrap it around him and tuck it under his back and smugly leave the room. We heard him trying to Houdini his way out of the blanket, but ha! we are parents and we are smarter than you baby! You will not break free! You will sleep soundly and not startle yourself!

So I decided to run downtown to Sephora for some new foundation and a foundation brush (thank you Amalah for that advice) and hightailed it out of there while Josh stayed home to mind the napping child. (He begged to come along to help me pick out new makeup. He cried when I told him he had to stay home with Jack.)

I got home two hours later and asked if he had checked on Jack. Josh said he heard a few noises on the monitor, so he was fine.

Because I am psycho, I wanted to see what he was doing in his crib and I had left the door cracked a wee bit. So I went upstairs and tiptoed to the door.

"Huh. That's funny," I thought. "It looks like Jack has something white over his head. OHMYGODATHEREISABLANKETOVERHISFACE."

I do believe if we would have had a home defibrillator, it would have come in handy at that precise moment SINCE MY HEART STOPPED. Hyperventilation ensued once my heart started beating properly again.

I threw the door open and flew the two steps to the crib and grabbed the blanket away from his head. Let me just say, this was no light covering. This was tight around his face and I had to yank it away.

His pacifier was going a mile a minute and he was fine. I did, however, scare the living hell out of him when I scooped him up, covering him with kisses and telling him how sorry I was that I almost killed him.

Now I know why they tell you not to put blankets in a crib. It's not because the baby could die, it's because the mommy could when she discovers the child's head wrapped in said blanket and child is fine.