Hi, this is Linda Szmulewitz owner of Sleep Tight Consultants. Today on the Sleepy Qs podcast. we’re going to be talking about transitioning out of the swaddle before we get into talking about our topic today. I just wanted to remind everybody that if you’ve been enjoying our podcast, please leave us your five star review so that we can continue to make these episodes for you. In addition, if you have specific questions about your child’s sleep, that you would like us to answer here on the podcast, please send them to our website on the contact page www.sleepyqs.com.
On to today’s topic: today, we’re going to be talking about transitioning out of the swaddle. I’m going to talk a little bit about swaddling in general. We’ll talk about when it’s time to transition out of the swaddle, and then we’re going to talk a little bit about how to do it, whether it should be sort of all or nothing, or a little bit of in-between.
The origin of swaddling: the Back to Sleep campaign
Here’s a little background on swaddling. Swaddling became necessary with the back to sleep campaign, which really started back in 1994. So this explains for many of us who were born prior to 1994. This explains why, if your child has a grandparent who was a parent back before 1994, why they really don’t understand why we swaddle our babies or they might say to you, well, why aren’t you just putting your baby on their stomach?
So just for the record, I feel like I’m coming across more and more people lately in my work who actually were swaddled as a baby because now 1994 was 27 years ago. And those children are actually becoming parents too themselves. So grandparents may actually start to become much more understanding of what swaddling is all about.
But back when we all slept on our bellies, the mattress muffled, the startle reflex. And so there was no swaddle that was necessary. But now that it’s safest for babies to be sleeping on their backs, many babies are swaddled.
Not all babies are swaddled
So not all babies are swaddled. Some really hate it. I come across as so many moms in my new moms group who will say that their baby hated it from the beginning and they never swaddled them. And actually they did pretty well. Or maybe they just swaddled them around their belly area and their legs, but their arms were out. And that didn’t cause a problem. Other children are really disturbed by their arms and their hands. And they’re flailing all over the place. And in that case, then that’s why the swaddle is necessary because that muffles that startle reflex and keeps them really a little bit more contained, straitjacketed if you will so that they’re not startling.
I definitely come across a lot of children who weren’t swaddled, haven’t been swaddled and parents really struggled with putting those children down. Those children may end up being held asleep a bit more than babies who are swaddled . They also might end up co-sleeping a little bit more, just because when their parents try to put them down in an independent sleep space without the swaddle, now they just startled themselves awake.
As far as, you know, your child being swaddled or not being swaddled, there, isn’t a right or wrong answer. And it’s not actually a problem, unless it’s a problem for you. If your baby is waking up frequently and this is problematic, then swaddling can be helpful. I often will recommend for parents if they’ve tried swaddling when their child was very, very little and it just didn’t seem like it was going well for them, I will often say, you know, might be worth giving it another shot.
Try using a swaddle product
Sometimes what will happen is that new parents might assume that babies are only swaddled in like swaddling blankets, like they do in the hospital, but for some children that offers a little bit too much wiggle room. And so they might actually do better with more of a swaddling product, something like a Miracle Blanket or a Halo sleep sack with the arm flaps that come over or a Woombie, which is it’s basically like a really snug sleeping bag that just zips right up or there’s a sleep sack called the Love to Dream. And this is one that allows a baby to have their arms up or their hands up more, but they’re still very contained. And so then they don’t startle nearly as much.
When to unswaddle?
A question I’m often asked is when do we have to unswaddle our baby? When do we have to move our child out of the swaddle? So the answer is that you don’t have to move them out until they are rolling. So if your baby is rolling themselves pretty regularly from back to front, then you can probably start to suspect that they’re going to start rolling more, or they might possibly roll in the swaddle.
If you listen to the episode from a couple of weeks ago about babies who are sleeping in the Snoo, those are children who, even if they’re rolling outside of the swaddle can sometimes stay swaddle a bit longer because in the Snoo, it keeps them on their back. It prevents your child from rolling because they’re essentially attached to the actual bassinet. So it does maintain them on their back for a little bit longer than they might be able to do otherwise if they were just in a regular bassinet, in a regular swaddle.
Will my baby ever be able to sleep unswaddled?
I know that there are many parents that are terrified that their baby will never be able to sleep without the swaddle. I can tell you that I was one of those parents once back, about 12 years ago, I remember my son was a newborn. He was sleeping in the swaddle. He loved the swaddle. It was the way that I got him to sleep. I swaddled him up and I kind of walked around with him like that. And I was able to put him down and he went to sleep and it worked so well.
And I was terrified that there was going to be this moment in time where I couldn’t swaddle him anymore. And that meant that he would never sleep again. And I actually remember having a conversation with my father-in-law about this, who knows very little about babies and even when my husband was a baby, he didn’t really do that much caretaking of him. So he really didn’t know all that much about babies himself, but I happened to be talking to him about this and I remember panicking. And I remember him saying to me, what do you mean he won’t sleep without the swaddle? Of course he will. He has his entire life ahead of him and I at the time was probably feeling rather offended and judged, but of course he was right. And lo and behold, my son did learn how to save without the swaddle.
New sleep associations formed
But there is a very strong association that develops between being swaddled and then going to sleep. The good news is, is that as you’re creating a bedtime routine or a nap routine for your child, you’re going to create all sorts of different associations for your child. So even without the swaddle, they will still be able to sleep.
Start with one arm out
So there are a few different approaches that you can take when you’re transitioning out of the swaddle. One option is to go one arm and then the other. For some babies that this works well to have the non-dominant arm out. Which you might be wondering, well, what is my baby’s dominant arm? They’re not exactly writing yet. So for most children that non-dominant arm is the left arm. And that means that it just tends to be a little bit less flaily when you take that one out first. So this always works better if you’re using some sort of like a swaddle product. So say for instance, your baby’s in the Halo SleepSack you can swaddle them with one arm still in the arm flaps and then the other one out. And that other hand that’s out, then they can start to use as a means of soothing themselves.
Both arms out but swaddled around the core
You can start there or you could start with both arms out, but still swaddle them around their core area. So still wrapping those arm flaps around their belly area. And that just creates a lot of pressure on their body and that helps them still be able to do a lot of that regulation without being, you know, completely out in just a regular sleep sack.
Cold turkey approach
There are other children who, where you go from one night with their arms into the next night, both arms are out and it’s more of sort of a cold turkey approach. And that works well for them. How this goes is really determined by whether or not your baby is still startling at all. So there isn’t really a define the age at which point your baby will stop startling. This is kind of a range. It often happens somewhere between the three to four month range. And so if your baby is still startling, then you’re going to know it because it’s probably not going to go very well when you take their arms out of the swaddle. But if they’re not, then they might be totally fine to be unswaddled.
I feel like this was one of the things that I remember my daughter, who was in daycare, really had taken care of for me. So I probably would have swaddled her for longer, but I remember the daycare really wasn’t swaddling her, or actually took swaddles to daycare. And I remember that I would come in to feed her at lunch and she would be waking up from a nap and her arms would be sticking out all over the place. And they didn’t really put a lot of effort into it. And so as a result, she just ended up not being swaddled anymore. And it went really well. My son who was not in daycare, as you heard earlier, I felt much more panicked about the move out of the swaddle, as I pretty much did anything that happened in his life between about three and nine months, which is the duration of the time that my daughter was in daycare. And I had this feeling like I didn’t really know how to take care of a child in that age range, because daycare did a lot of that for me.
The Magic Sleepsuit
Nonetheless, another option if your baby is particularly young and you just can’t swaddle them anymore. So maybe they’ve busted out of every single swaddle option that you’ve tried. Maybe your baby’s just a little bit bigger and they just really don’t fit into any of those other swaddling product options. Then you might want to consider using something like the Baby Merlin Magic Sleep Suit. This is a sort of puffy pressurized suit that was developed by a pediatric physical therapist. And what it does is it puts pressure on your baby’s body in much the same way that the swaddle does, but it allows their arms and legs to be out. So they’re able to move around a little bit more, but they are still somewhat immobilized. I have seen children though, be able to get their hands into their mouth. I even had a family once that lived down in Florida and they just felt like it was really hot. And so they cut the arms off the magic sleep suit and still it had the pressure on their child’s body. From the rest of the suit and then their child was able to get her thumb in her mouth and it worked out really well.
This is a good short-term solution. Eventually you will need to take your child out of the magic sleep suit. I don’t have parents do any sort of sleep training with children in the magic sleep suit, because you really want your baby to be able to move around and use their body as a means of regulating themselves.
If your child rolls in the Magic Sleepsuit, then you absolutely do have to take them out of it. Another thing to just keep in mind about the magic sleep suit. Can’t go in the dryer. So it does take a really long time to air dry. So it’s the sort of thing that I do recommend you have a couple of just so that if you need to wash it, which you will need to do every once in a while, you’re able to have a backup one for your child.
Another, transition product option would be the Zippity Zip. So this, I think of, as sort of like a full buy sleep sack your child is still going to have a lot of ability to move around in it. They can roll in it. They can actually even stand up and walk in it. But it doesn’t allow them to sort of flail all about. This can be a long-term solution for some children. What I don’t like about it so much just as a long-term option is that it doesn’t allow your child to really use their hands. So if you have any sort of a security object that your baby wants to find and get up to their face, cause they like to smell it or rub it on their face. They won’t have very good access to their hands for this. Also, if you have any expectation that your baby is going to be able to find a pacifier and put it back in their mouth, this also can be really hard while they’re in the zippity, zip. They do make the Zippity Zip for older children as well. So they can transition from being completely enclosed to eventually having their hands and feet out.
Day sleep and night sleep are different
You have to take your child out of the swaddle once they are rolling, but if they’re not rolling, they can continue to be in the swaddle at night for awhile. And also you can continue to swaddle your child for naps even if you’re on swaddling them at night, I, again remember vividly when my son was a baby. I remember actually going for his four month pediatrician visit. And I remember my doctor saying, because he was actually out of the swaddle at night and I had told her that, and I remember her saying, Oh, you have to do the same thing during the day that you’re doing at night. At the time at the time, I knew nothing compared to what I know now about children and sleep. And I just thought, well, my doctor said it, so I must have to do it. And he was absolutely not ready to be unswaddled for naps. And after a couple of days of him only taking three 30 minute naps, which is what would happen when he wasn’t swaddled, I remember sobbing on the phone to a friend and the friend saying, “well, who cares What your doctor said, go back to swaddling him for naps. If it helps swaddle him. Do what you know you need to do as his mom.” And I thought, Oh wait, you’re totally right. And so we went back to swaddling him for naps and he went back to napping and it probably was maybe another three or four weeks. And then he was ready to be on swaddled during the day. So this is totally fine. Just generally speaking, I have parents do different things during the day. Then they’re doing at night in many instances, especially for younger babies. And that can work very well.
Rolling is the best solution
Overall all the best solution for the swaddle transition though is for your baby to start rolling. And once they can roll onto their belly, it is safe for them to sleep like that. But this is still a new skill. It’s something that’s hard for babies to figure out in the beginning. They’ve never slept like that many instances before, so that’s going to take some adjustment, but as hard or scary as the proposition of moving out of the swaddle may seem, it actually can go pretty smoothly for a lot of babies. And then once they start rolling, they actually end up sleeping much better on their bellies than you would expect them to be able to.
I hope that this was helpful for anybody who is trying to figure out how to transition their baby out of the swaddle. As I said earlier, please send us in your questions. We’d be happy to answer them here. And thanks for listening in.
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