Miracle Blanket Giveaway

Awhile ago, the inventor of the miracle blanket left a note on my blog (on this post) thanking me for mentioning the blanket on my blog and offering me a free blanket. I was so surprised to find that comment; it felt like it came out of the blue, especially since it's been awhile since we've used a miracle blanket (we stopped using it when Evie was about 3 months old) and quite a long time since I mentioned it on the blog. We don't need another because we already have two that Evie used, stashed away in wait of our eventual baby #2. So, I am excited to have a reason for my first blog giveaway!

A quick disclaimer: the miracle blanket people didn't ask me to do a giveaway or to write about the blanket and praise it; I'm deciding to do this on my own because we really do love the blanket.

Here is the booty for the giveaway (this is a pic from the website, not a pic of the actual blanket, but the real thing is green with blue trim, and I do have it in hand):

I am thrilled to be able to give one of these away because it is a product that J and I heartily endorse to new parents we know. In fact, we discussed recently that it might become our standard baby shower gift. We learned about it from a friend (and fraternity brother) of J's who was a groomsman at our wedding and whose wife gave birth to their son over a year ago. These friends told us about the blanket and sent us one as a gift, but not before J and I had already ordered a couple of them from the website.

Evie was too strong and wiggly to be swaddled in receiving blankets or in other types of swaddling blankets. She always got her arms free and then woke herself up by scratching her face or bonking herself in the nose. The day after we got the miracle blanket in the mail, we tried it for the first time. We were intimidated by it at first, but after watching the instructional video on the website we figured it out and it was an (almost) immediate success. I wrote about it in this post from last November. I also wrote about it here, in her two month post, and I am still convinced that it was a combination of formula feeding and the blanket that lead to Evie sleeping through the night almost all of her third month. We finally stopped using the blanket on Christmas night, after Evie was over 3 months old; read about it here.

What we love(d) about the miracle blanket:

• It is the only swaddling blanket we have used that actually kept Evie's arms at her sides so that she didn't wake herself up with them


• It doesn't use velcro, so it doesn't startle a baby as you are wrapping and unwrapping them (Evie has a hyper-sensitivity to the sound of velcro and I bet many babies do the same thing)


• It is cotton and lightweight so we never worried about her overheating


• Almost every night we used it, she slept at least 7 and as many as 12 hours (we wish we had one from the start)

Our tips for success:

• Don't judge the blanket's success based on the first couple of times you use it. Try it four or five times before you decide whether it works for your baby or not.


• Watch the free instructional video on the website a few times before you try to use the blanket for the first time; it will give you confidence in what you're doing.


• Don't despair if you feel like wrapping the blanket around the baby is difficult at first or if you feel as though you are doing it clumsily or incorrectly or bunching up the fabric too much. That's exactly how we felt at first but after a few nights it was much easier.


• Make sure the top of the blanket comes only to the baby's shoulders. That way you can put them in a crib and not think twice about the blanket contributing to SIDS.


• Because the blanket only comes to the baby's shoulders, don't forget to put him or her in a light cotton sleeper or in a onesie (depending on time of year) before wrapping them in the blanket.


• Make sure the baby's diaper is freshly changed and absorbent enough to go all night because they might sleep longer than you think they will.


• When we wrapped Evie we put her in a onesie and socks under the blanket and she seemed perfectly comfortable, neither too warm nor too cold, all through the months of November and December here in the lower Midwest. We keep our house at about 65 degrees at night in the winter.
• Deanna used the miracle blanket for Snippet, so Deanna, feel free to add to this list in the comments!

Here's how the giveaway will work:

• Enter by leaving a comment with your best guesses for the following 3 questions:

1. What was Evie's weight, rounded to the nearest ounce, at her 6 month doctor visit this past Tuesday morning? She pooped right before we went. :)
2. What color was her outfit at said appointment?
3. How many times did she spit up while the doctor was examining her?

• If you don't want to enter you can still leave a comment, just don't answer the questions
• The person who has the most accurate answers will win. If more than one person gets all three questions right, I'll number the finalists and have my mom choose a random number between one and x, x being the number of people who got the questions right.
• The winner will receive the miracle blanket pictured above, new in the original packaging :) as well as the board book A to Z by Sandra Boynton (new as well).
• I will notify the winner, so make sure your entry is linked to your blog or e-mail so that I can get in touch with you. I will also post the winner on my blog.
• The winner will send me his or her address and I will pay shipping and packaging costs.
• Feel free to spread the word about this giveaway, but I'm not giving extra entries to people who blog about this or follow me or whatever else.
• Calling up my mom, J or our doctor for the answers is grounds for disqualification, if you know me well enough to get your hands on those phone numbers.
• The deadline for entries is this Sunday night, March 29th, 2009, at 11:59 PM Central Daylight Savings Time.