Of course this makes bedtime a challenge. We can’t simply let Eli fall asleep on his own or “cry it out” as some people suggest. Because when he’s awake, he’s working on taking his Dobbs Brace off. For the first 5 months of his life a well-timed bottle was all he needed to fall asleep. Now that he’s hit his 6-month “birthday,” the bottle has lost it’s power. It’s as if Superman suddenly wasn’t affected by kryptonite.
This makes for many long nights as we try to get him down.
Sometimes though, it looks like Eli’s gone to sleep when he’s really been playing possum. (A favorite game of his.) When we check back on him later, we see something like this (although at this point we had managed to get his right shoe back on, his right foot never moved):
Eli comfortably sleeping: Perhaps this is why he doesn't like to wear his brace |
So last night we implemented Operation: Give Him the Boot!
It was a risky move. But we decided that instead of spending the next 4 hours fighting with him to go back asleep we’d let him fall asleep and then put on both his sock and his brace.
I can’t stress enough how difficult it was. Easily on par with landing a man on the moon. He’s a light sleeper. Who hates wearing his braces anyway. After multiple attempts and about 20 minutes of effort, we managed to successfully put on his sock, un-velcro his shoes, and then get the shoes back on.
We plan to enter an international Jenga competition later this month.
Haha sounds like you have an escape artist on your hands! We had to do the add boots and bar while sleeping maneuver several times too and it didn't always work. How exactly is Eli getting out? Is he actually un-attaching the bar like it looks like in the picture, or is he just wiggling out of his shoes? I am actually wondering if it's the shoes, maybe the velcro has too much give to it. Maybe the next time you get new size shoes for him you can get the ones with the leather straps that buckle instead, I think they are more secure.
ReplyDeleteHe's actually able to slide his right foot out of the brace. Our pediatrician said it's an issue with his heel bone not being properly developed (which of course is another issue we have to deal with.) All of that means the plastic in the boot doesn't hold his foot securely enough. And as they say, give an inch take a mile!
ReplyDeleteAs for the picture, I had to disassemble the bar / shoes so I could get them on. He was much too fussy to try and hold his feet together while we did this. It added to the difficulty level (Judges gave it a 9.4) but it ended up working pretty well.