The first time I met my nephew Jared, Suephy told me that babies need to be swaddled to help them sleep. It keeps them warm, which is important because babies don’t maintain their body temperature well yet, and it keeps them from involuntarily flailing their arms. The flailing leads to moves that startle them, which in turn wakes them from their own sleep. So when Miranda and Eleanor were born, we swaddled.
We learned to swaddle pretty decently. There turns out to be all sorts of tricks to make sure that the blankets stay swaddled tightly. Leave room for their legs if they curl them while they’re being wrapped. A second blanket swaddled around the baby helps hold the first blanket in place. Make sure their arms are down by their sides so that their hands don’t instantly pop out the top. Keep the top edge of the blanket away from the baby’s mouth to avoid accidentally triggering their rooting reflex when it brushes their face. Have a way of calming the baby after the swaddling is done. They often get riled up while being swaddled. I leave about 10 mL remaining at the bottom of a bottle, and then swaddle one of the girls. After she’s securely wrapped, I calm her down by feeding her that last bit in the bottle and it’s off to sleep for her.
We’ve had naysayers though. Both our mothers were in agreement — you don’t have to swaddle them that tightly, do you? Aren’t they hot? Isn’t it better to let them move their arms? Let them get some exercise, learn coordination? We thought, maybe this is about the age where you stop swaddling babies and just making sure they’re warm enough. It didn’t work. Yesterday, we fed both Eleanor and Miranda and set them down to sleep. They were crying within five minutes. We picked them put, patted them and soothed them, and they settled back down. We put them down to sleep and within three minutes they were crying again. After about an hour of this, I swaddled each of them tightly, soothed them, and put them down to sleep. They slept straight through until it was time to eat again. Sorry if it looks mean to bind their arms tightly to their sides, but it really works like a charm. We’ll give them their tummy time, and their active time, but when it’s time to sleep, for now we’ll still be swaddling.
We second the swaddling! Jeremy was the expert “burrito” maker. Whenever I do it, Maya seems to wiggle her arms out after a while. I think we stopped swaddling at about 6 weeks, when she got too long for the blankets, and also seemed to sleep much better at night.
I love swaddling too. I used the book “The Happiest Baby on the Block” a lot, the author also loves swaddling. Babies don’t need to move their arms at this age, they don’t have much room in the womb either!
swaddling is great! i told you i got special swaddling wrap from taiwan and he can never get out of it. i used it a lot. i still use it in the winter when it’s cold b/c he likes to kick off blankets. with the wrap (no swaddling), i know he’ll be warm even without the blanket. i swaddled lucas until he can push and lift/turn his head (which was abt 2-3mo), then i put him on his tummy (just don’t tell AAP that). he slept better on his tummy. now he sleeps whatever position he pleases. oh… we started doing baby exercises with him when he was abt 2mo. really good for strengthening muscles but downside is that he never liked to be on his back and playing on the gymini activity mat.
Penny was all about the swaddling. There is a blanket out there (babies r us carries it) called the SwaddleMe. We thought we were wrapping her pretty tight, but she would manage to slip out at night and cry. This blanket has velcro on it and we found she would sleep for longer stretches at night when she had it on.