It's true that the swaddle soothes a baby. Especially if you can master it with a regular blanket.
We were not ones to master it well at all. With the value of sleep on the rise we bought one of those blankets with the Velcro that swaddles the baby with ease. It worked wonders for our Little Flower.
I wondered one day, "When do we stop swaddling our baby?"
Little Flower let us know the answer sooner than we anticipated.
Now.
So, what do you do with a baby who really would rather not be swaddled and continues to break out of the swaddle, yet still flails her arms about (making it difficult for her to fall asleep and to stay asleep)? Oh the dilemma.
Well, I did some looking around on the Internet and in our clothing drawer and found a semi-helpful solution. I put a sleeping gown or sack on the wee one and then pin or rubber-band the arms off --with her little arms inside. You see, it still acts like a swaddle in that it keeps her arms from going all over the place but not so confining as the swaddle. It works well enough. However, I have noticed that the gowns that snap up work much better than ones that go over the head. Little Flower stretches the neck even further and sometimes breaks out. The snaps are much stronger.
I think I need more snappy sacks.
My children all hated being swaddled, having their hands bound inside the blanket. But I did get good use out of one of these sleeping bag type things for Megan. I put her in her regular feety, snap up (or zip!) long sleeve things, then just slid her inside the sleeping bag (for lack of a better word) when she went to bed. It wasn't tight, but it did keep her warm. I found that warm babies sleep much better and longer. (For what it's worth...)
ReplyDeleteSam had to swaddled until he was 4 months old! But he's let his arms escape and then cry, and we became professional burrito makers. The only problem was finding a blanket big and thin enough to wrap a 4 month old! Stretchy microfiber worked the best :)
ReplyDeleteTrue to their heritage, my children all loved "the burrito". Mr Lorenc, on theother hand, will argue to the death that no child likes "the burrito".
ReplyDeletePerhaps he'd be happier if we called it, "The Pierogi"?