Question: I apologize for the length, however I hope to offered any possible needed information, to save you having to ask for more info.

My 16 lb, 4 month old grandson had two undiagnosed hernias from age 2 weeks until they were removed by laproscopy one month ago. They would cause him to grunt very loudly, appearing in pain, for 14-16 hours daily, mostly at night until his bowels moved by noon the following day. It was impossible for my grandson, his parents, or us, his grandparents, after we began keeping him 3-4 days weekly so at least his parents could get some sleep. He was diagnosed with colic by his first doctor and prescribed gripe juice, which didn't help. Athe two months old, she advised us to put him in a room by himself so we wouldn't be able to hear his grunting, enabling us to get sleep.

After that horrible advice, we found a new pediatrician, who we're very happy with. She requested we record his grunting, which I did. She used the video to ask the opinions of several other pediatricians and a pediatric cardiologist, but all were baffled as to the cause. Even his pediatric surgeon didn't think it was related to the hernias. She could only offer that it might be some weird form of colic. A hernia appeared on one side, leading to his surgery. We blame no doctor for the undiagnosed hernias, as it was obviously a rate symptom and thankfully, the grunting immediately stopped after surgery and hasn't returned.

Because he slept better in a swing when he had the hernias, it's mostly where he slept, with adult supervision for mostly all but two weeks of his 4 month life and occasionally in crib if he would. Two weeks ago he completely stopped sleeping in his crib and would wake at least every other hour. After realizing he was refusing to sleep in his crib because he wanted in his swing, we stopped letting him use his swing, cold turkey, eight days ago. After the first nightmare few days, we assumed he'd eventually get sleepy enough and learn to sleep in his crib but he didn't. After a week of my sleep deprived, grumpy grandson, who only sleept 20 minutes on Saturday from 10am through 8pm, we relented on Sunday and let him sleep in his swing during the day, so he could finally get some good sleep. He did. He slept fairly well in his crib last night, too.

Do you have advice to offer to help with a transition him from sleeping in his swing to sleeping in his crib. Maybe cold turkey was the right way. Maybe a time limit. Maybe thetesthere'sthere's other advice you know of. We don't know and need help. My daughter has temporarily moved in with us so we can devote 100% to whatever needs to be done to help him. We're not expecting it to be cakewalk but a 4 month old barely sleeping day or night can't be a good thing for him. I know it sure wasn't for the parents or grandparents! The swing weight limit is only nine pounds away.

Thank you for any advice.

Thank you so much for such excellent, thorough advice. It's appreciated and we will surely follow it. I think I only have one more question: how would you advise we wean him from swing? Ex: should we reduce use to every other nap on weekly or bi-weekly? Another method? We'd just like to possibly avoid messing this up a second time as badly as we did the first! I hadn't heard about some XXXXXXX swing relation to SIDS and will definitely let my two pregnant nieces know. Thank you, once again, for such detail to help with a much slower transition. We feel more confident doing this now.