Halo Sleep Sacks

When our older daughter was born, she always ran hot in the home that we had at the time.  Our bedroom was on the third floor of our townhouse, so it was almost always warm.  Hence, we never swaddled or used sleep sacks.

Our new house is a little more drafty, however (even when kept at 70 degrees), and our Little Man was born late enough that it’s getting a bit chilly in the master bedroom at night.  Fortunately, our hospital participates in the HALO Safer Way to Sleep Initiative (LINK), so our take-home bag included a newborn-sized Halo Swaddler.  We put that on Little Man at night his first month home from the hospital, and fell in love.  We were so glad to avoid loose blankets that could come up and suffocate him in the middle of the night.  We also made sure to place him on his back in the co-sleeper we have next to the bed (more on the co-sleeper later).  There are lots of great tips for safe sleeping at Halo’s website (LINK), if you have any questions – keeping your little one safe is such an important priority.  Coincidentally, I think it’s pretty awesome that they include such good info on their website – but what else would you expect from a company with such a great mission statement:  HALO Innovations is dedicated to putting the health, safety and well-being of babies first. From our new bassinet, the HALO™ Bassinest™ Swivel Sleeper (www.halobassinest.com) to our HALO® SleepSack® wearable blankets, which are now used in over 1200 hospitals nationwide, HALO is committed to helping babies sleep safely.

Now we have a bigger sleep sack that he wears in the 3 – 6 month size.  I have become a huge fan of the Halo sleep sacks.  It’s perfect for nighttime diaper changes and sleep – it zips from the bottom up, so you don’t have to take the entire sack off of baby to change a diaper.  The swaddlers have arms that can optionally go over baby’s arms, or (if your children are like mine and fight an arm swaddle) can go under baby’s armpits if you’d like to keep his/her arms free.  The fabric is a nice, heavyweight cotton – so it’s warm, but not too warm that it would put baby at an increased SIDS risk.  It also washes incredibly well, and is so wonderfully soft.  Our boy’s daycare also uses Halo sleep sacks, so he’s entirely comfortable sleeping there in them since he’s used to them at home.

Back to the co-sleeper.  As you can see from the above photo, we have the Arm’s Reach mini co-sleeper from back when the Pickle was born four years ago.  It works great overall, but it has some downfalls.  First of all, you really can’t get it all that close to you without sleeping on the edge of your bed when it’s in co-sleeper mode.  Since the one side folds down and you tether it to the side of your bed, that’s all the closer it gets.  Additionally, you have to crawl to and from the foot of the bed to get in and out of bed – which becomes difficult if you’ve got the baby in your arms.  I wish the Halo Bassinest Swivel Sleeper had been available at that time – it’s a new product from Halo that makes the room-sharing experience much easier.  The best way I can describe it is that it works sort of like one of those tables you have bedside at the hospital, if that were a bassinet – you can swivel it over and away from the bed (avoiding the Arm’s Reach Shimmy), and it also can be nestled next to you in the bed to get a closer sleep while still giving baby his or her own sleep surface.   

It seems like a really awesome product, I’m jealous of all of those who just started their families with this on the market!