Stay Home PaPa

Sleep Sack – Blessing or Curse?

Posted on March 14, 2012 Updated on March 14, 2012

From the parents point of view, the sleep sack is a blessing – but I think our darling 7-month-old daughter Maddie, would beg to differ. Once you start zipping the sleep sack up with the baby inside, you have a life and death struggle on your hands. At least that’s my little girl’s reaction to the process.

Maddie takes the advice of the famous poet named Dylan Thomas who wrote: “Do not go gentle into that good night.” She actually takes things up a notch with her “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Just the thought of being put to bed and zipped up into the sack is such an alarming prospect for my little girl. Her reaction is nothing short of bizarre. It’s like there’s broken glass or live bees waiting in the sleep for her.

For a while, I was actually fooled into opening the sack to make sure there was nothing in there that was causing any discomfort. That’s always a mistake though, because trying to zip up the sleep sack is like trying to put a rabid Rottweiler into a Tupperware container. Those pulsating legs have no interest in being tucked away and will fight until the bitter end.

The process itself actually takes a little less than a minute. Once my little angel is tucked away, all that anger and anxiety gently drifts away.

I have tried time and time again to talk her through the ordeal, but it’s becoming more and more apparent that I have to let her work it out. She doesn’t want to be soothed, she just does not want to put the outfit on.

However, as I noted a few weeks ago, putting Maddie into the crib without the sleep sack is a wasted effort. She will sleep no more than 30 minutes at a time without it. With the sack on, she sleeps anywhere from one to two hours with each nap. So that 30 to 60 seconds of raw carnage is obviously well worth the effort – its just a little bit confusing.