Swaddling

by Phil

My son has joined a new cadre this past week- those who sleep unrestrained! And while we never shackled him to the wall at night, we did wrap him tightly in a swaddle.

Any new parent, hopefully, knows the magic of the swaddle. Tightly wrapping a newborn in a blanket to prevent movement helps them calm down and sleep for longer periods of time. It mimics the constricted space of the womb and triggers some sort of comfort instinct.

So we consistently swaddled our son in a blanket for naps and at night. Sometimes, if he was fussy, he'd be swaddled during periods of wakefulness, too, as it would help him stay calm. We found that the normal receiving blankets were too small to really tightly wrap him so we found a few larger-sized blankets that would do the job.

Baby Burrito!

We soon took to calling him "Little Houdini" however because, no matter what we did, he would find a way out of the swaddle. We joked that we should take him on the road and hang him hundreds of feet in the air. We'd never have to work again! At first it was just his arms...

Then he found ways to bust out that really impressed us...

While he would try to get out of the swaddle, being out of it made him absolutely angry and kept him from sleeping. It's some sort of baby paradox. Clearly we had to introduce some new technology that would properly restrain this kid. So around day 80, out came the store-bought swaddle. Oh, joy!

This worked really well... for a time. But he still found his way out of it. A few examples of how we found him after a nap.

Actually, it worked really well for a couple months. While he'd get his arms (or periodically a leg) out, re-swaddling him normally did the trick to put him right back to sleep.

But we noticed in late December that he was getting really angry at the swaddle and sleeping poorly. This wasn't the normally slight annoyance at being restrained that would disappear within moments as he fell asleep. He was kicking his legs and we had to go in to soothe him more than usual. But this was right before we left for cross country Christmas travel. Traveling isn't the best time to start experimenting with your kid's sleeping habits. They already have to deal with enough change while traveling and meeting family for the first time. And while traveling, his sleeping pattern was a tad wonky. He didn't sleep as well as he normally does but that could be chalked up, again, to the travel and not being in his normal surroundings.

So when we got home, I started experimenting with unswaddled sleep. It started with naps during the day. There was no way we were going to jump right into a full 8 hours of unswaddled sleep and expect it to go well. If we've learned anything, we've learned that baby's don't like change. Even when they want it. Again- the baby paradox.

Then after a few days of napping without a swaddle, he had a bad night of sleep. He kept waking up every few minutes angry. So during one crying fit, I just went in and unwrapped him. As soon as he was free, the crying stopped and he fell asleep. I'd like to think the napping during the day eased him into it. But who knows.

Now he sleeps like a champ. There are still times (like last night at 3:30 am! AH!) when he gets too worked up and needs to be swaddled for a bit to calm down. But that's only happened like twice in the past week.

The little guy is growing up and sleeping like a human being instead of encased like some sort of summer sausage.

On a side note, my wife and I are extremely thankful for the DVD "Happiest Baby on the Block" for it's many amazing suggestions. I'm not going to turn this blog into some sort of shilling platform, but really, if you're a new parent, I can't recommend it enough. Rent it, borrow it, do whatever. Just watch it. It really helped us keep our son calm through his hospital stays and the first four or so months.