God Bless the Swing

Carter is my little man. I love holding him and watching him grow and learn. Let me say a part of that again, I LOVE holding him. This has become a problem. Because I love holding my son (as I loved holding Haylee too, and it was a problem with her) he will not sleep without being held. Carter will fall asleep on you, but the second that you try to put him down - the eyes open, the grunting begins, the arms begin to fight the swaddle, and eventually, the red face and crying come about. Needless to say, there have been many days where I have spent sitting on the couch holding and watching him. I am not complaining about sitting on the couch all day holding my son (although I am sure there were/are days Byron comes home from a hard day at work and looks at the house and thinks, "what did you do all day?") but there are some days where I do want to get things done around the house, and I can't because the second I put him down, he cries. So you say, why don't you put him in the vibrating chair or something like that? Carter will stay asleep if you put him in the vibrating chair that we have, only problem there - it turns off after 15 minutes. If baby falls asleep with vibration and then it stops, what happens - yep, the eyes open, the grunting begins, the arms begin to fight the swaddle and eventually, the red face and crying come about. Byron and I have tried the swing before, but Carter had no interest in it.

So, this brings me to the last couple of days. I am throwing my dear friend Erin a baby shower this weekend (her baby boy is due in December) and I need to finish up the baby word scramble, put the safety pins on ribbon for the ladies to wear around their necks, oh, and clean the house. In addition to the shower, I return to work on Monday and I am starting to feel like I need to get the house cleaned and organized before I go back. Well, I can't do all of that sitting on the couch holding my beautiful son. I decided that I was going to give the swing another shot - forget you vibrating chair, you do nothing for me when you turn off, except tick my sleeping baby off. So, I pulled out the swing, and put Carter in it, turned it on and held my breath that he would continue to sleep. It worked...it actually worked. He slept, with a few grunts every once in awhile, but he slept....I got to shower, I got to make my bed, Haylee's bed, clean her room, put her laundry away, put my laundry away, Carter's laundry, load the dishwasher (you get the point), I was able to to SOMETHING!

I know that we will have our issues when it comes to breaking him of needing the swing to sleep, which I can handle - he goes to bed at night without any issues, thankfully, so it is merely needing to break him of sleeping in the swing on weekends. I am pretty sure that I will have no problem holding him all weekend long once I go back to work....all I have to say is, thank you Link-A-Doos Open Top Take Along Swing for giving me the opportunity to take a shower when I wake in the morning, instead of at night when my husband gets home. You are the best!