Monday, October 4, 2010

Superstitious

I had taught my daughter to sleep in her own bed, and to sleep through the night.

We hit a bump in the road when I returned to my faculty position at the start of August.  While I love living my life by the rhythms of the academic year, it seemed that my Wee One liked the "off for the summer" part much better than she enjoyed the "back to campus for fall semester" part.  Her sleep was disrupted off and on as part of the transition.

So I started examining (again) our daily routine, our bedtime routine, even our nighttime diapers, to try to figure out what was working, and what wasn't.  I noticed that on the nights that she wore a certain set of pajamas, that she would usually sleep through the night.  On nights that she wore other pajamas, she woke up.

During our trip to Pennsylvania in June, we went shopping at an outlet mall, and of course I hit the Carter's store.  I bought several sleepers that ended up being too big, and I bought one set of pajamas called "comfy-fit" or something. 

I had no idea about these things, so I'll educate you on what I have learned.  In sizes 12 months and above, pajamas have to be treated with flame retardant chemicals to make them, well, flame retardant.  But there are parents that don't want their children sleeping in chemically-treated clothes.  So the CPSC has a loophole, where all-cotton, non-flame-retardant sleepwear can be sold, but only if it is tight-fitting.  Loose-fitting pajamas can only be flame retardant material.

So your options are: cotton tight-fitting pajamas, or flame retardant "comfy fit" pajamas.  Since I'm a somewhat crunchy mama trying to minimize the nasty chemicals my baby is exposed to, I chose the cotton, snug-fitting pajamas.  But there was one pair that were just so cute.  They had a dog on them, and my little one was just learning to say dog, so I bought that one set that were the comfy-fit, even though they said "flame retardant" on the label and I knew what that meant.

So, it's September, and my daughter will only sleep through the night if she is wearing .... the comfy-fit dog pajamas.  The chemical pajamas.  The pajamas that will probably cause her to have cancer.  Are the only ones she will sleep through the night in.

Without the pants.  I took this photo to show the Flip diaper that I had gotten.  Somehow I don't have a photo of her in the dog pajamas with the pants.
It only took me about 5 seconds after realizing this to jump off the somewhat-crunchy bandwagon and on the Carter's website and order every other set of comfy-fit pajamas in size 12 months.  I became utterly superstitious about her pajamas.  I had to have the ones she would sleep through the night in.

They had 3 other sets online in her size, (well, 4 if you count the set that said DADDY all over them.  Trust me, I TOTALLY considered that pair.  THAT'S how you know how superstitious I was about this.)

These also have a dog, a very sparkly silver poodle.
And you know what?  IT TOTALLY WORKS.  When she's not running a fever, she totally sleeps through the night if she's wearing these pajamas.  It's amazing.

Most of the time she's sleeping in her bed.  Occasionally, though, it's mommies.
When she grows, we're up-sizing to the 18 months.  Because I'm totally superstitious about the pajamas.

2 comments:

Betsy said...

Those are some seriously cute pjs. Gunne will not sleep without his sleep sack. WILL NOT SLEEP without his sleep sack. So we have three. One in fleece, one in cotton and one in A&A muslin because we have no air conditioning, and my child would not sleep without his damn sleep sack, so I would put him to bed in nothing but a diaper and a muslin sack.

Now we are back to fleece, and he's starting to outgrow it. We are totally sizing up, and I'm thinking of buying even more so we can A) Layer when it's cold and B) wash them more frequently because ugh.

Betsy said...

I am commenting again to let you know that I inspected the label of my son's pjs tonight and discovered something: you can remove the chemicals that make them flame retardant.

Not sure how you feel about loose cloth being non-flame retardant but if you want to strip the chemicals, use a soap based detergent, like actual soap, not tide, and wash them on hot. Hopefully you don't get any shrinkage - I wash all Gunne's stuff in hot because it rinses better and doesn't leave crap on his skin and haven't had much in the way of shrinkage.

Anyway, do with this what you will. =)