Vanessa, the chaos as a prelude to sleep

John and I are getting very familiar with Vanessa's sleep process. By reading articles, I've been assured that crying and screaming, whether before sleep or just in general, are common features that babies exhibit.

To me, it's amazing how a 7 pound human could emit such loud noise from her lungs.
Vanessa can go from silent to screaming in less than one second. Another thing that amazes me is how she can seem to "detect" when we move her. Most of the time, after she feeds she will fall right asleep on my chest. I'll wait for 5-10 minutes to pass and then I will carefully move her to the bassinet or the co-sleeper on the bed. It's like she senses the loss of skin-to-skin contact because, bam!, she will wake up and immediately begin screaming.

The book Happiest Child on the Block  has been far more useful than any other baby books. I bought a bunch of baby books before Vanessa was born. Despite being an avid reader, I actually only started one of the baby books, What To Expect When You're Expecting. Although I was 30+ weeks when I started the book, I felt the need to begin from page one. By the time V was born, I had only gotten up to week 14---not too beneficial when the baby has already met the outside world.

Happiest Child on the Block has convinced us that arms-in swaddling is the way to go. If Vanessa is fussy and we are trying to get her to sleep, post-feeding, we will generally swaddle her. John is good at swaddling with a regular blanket, but I need the "idiot's guide to swaddling," aka the Halo sack. Once we swaddle her, we usually play thunderstorm sounds on Spotify. In extreme cases of fussiness, I'll run the vacuum for a few minutes. We also loudly say "Shhhhh" to her. These methods do not always work (and when they don't that scream is incredibly shrill), but when they do work, the result is blissful sleep.