I don't allow ANYTHING in the bed with them until they are two and move OUT of the nursery. We don't allow ANY blankets in the nursery much less on the kids.
I use sleeper sacks and footed pajamas to put over their clothes. I use mitted sweatshirts or mitted sacks if they need their hands covered.
I put them to bed WIDE awake in a pitch black dark room that is cool. Temp is usually around 60-62
I don't do any kind of lulling to sleep at all ever. Wide awake to fast asleep.
I don't even allow blankets IN the nursery for any age because I'm fearful one of the older toddlers could hurl it over inside another babies play pen. The odds of that are really low but I can't take the chance.
I don't swaddle. I have a good stock of mitted sacks of different sizes and just use those over the clothes. Once they outgrow the sacks then I just use thick old school zipper footed jammies over their clothes.
It's tough when you don't have the space for kids to have their own area away from you and the others to work out their own sleep patterns. I think there is just so much day to day pressure to protect the afternoon break and to have everyone down at the same time.
I just decided that the more important thing for me was to have a space where they could sleep where I could get away from the crying at any time. I know how pervasive the stress is when you are bombarded with that without break. It causes a LOT of parents and providers making desperate decisions and bad reactions.
For me, the safest thing for everyone is to have equipment that is deep enough to keep kids comfortable to age three, have the space to have under twos separated from over twos. Have space between where I am at nap and where they are at nap... and have a strict routine of everyone goes down from X to X without exception once they are past newborn age.
This results in 99 days of 100 every kid sleeps all of nap every day. It really really works. If one child wakes up and it wakes the others I do not get the others up. They learn from baby on to sleep through the other kids and to sleep through my checking the room frequently during nap. They also sleep through vacuuming and cleaning of the adjacent rooms.
Do you feel you must get the kids up who wake up to the baby crying? I don't allow that. They can be awake but they can't get up because they have awakened during nap. When they know they can't get up they sleep through a LOT of noise. I don't even TRY to be quiet during nap. I don't do anything to stop a baby from fussing during nap. I just set my nap times, do my checks, and only take a child out of bed if they are sick or they need a diaper change.
Voila.. everybody sleeps
