Inventions

Ok, I'm not sure if I invented these things or methods, but I have come to rely on a few of these tricks to make sure M kept her patch on during those terrible early patching days, and keeps her patch on these days during her naps.

This coat has been a real blessing for the car.  The hands fold over so she can't rip her patch off in the car.  For a while this was her favourite car activity.  I would buckle her in and we'd be barely out of the driveway and she would have already ripped off her patch.

I then tried her mittens on her that have the elastic drawstrings.

A drive of any length left her enough time to vigorously shake her hands and send the mitts flying, to then rip her patch off.  This coat means we can all relax in the car, knowing that she has no ability to get that patch off.

I thought this was clever!  M's second favourite time to really rip her patches off were during her naps.  She would rip them off before sleeping, and if she manages to do this, the chances of a nap are slim, because she 'parties' with both her eyes in her crib.  So first, again, I tried just having her nap in the elastic drawstring mittens.  This worked for a few naps and then she learned that she could just shake them off, pull her patch off, and have a crib party.  Then I bought a long-sleeve diaper shirt and sewed the arm holes closed at the end.  This worked great!  For a few naps...  She wore the diaper shirt, and she couldn't escape it, but the fabric of the diaper shirt was too thin.  She still managed to pull her patch off through the fabric of the shirt.

So now, and we are still doing this for all naps in her crib, she wears her mittens inside this sewn up diaper shirt.  Her mitts are too thick to do any pinching or grabbing through, and the sewn up diaper shirt ensures that she can't shake those mitts off.  Putting on her mitts and diaper shirt before naps has become her routine now.