Swaddle vs arms out?

[toriaum]

My little one is 3.5 months old and I was blessed with a champion sleeper in the beginning...

Now she's struggling with 45 minute naps and night wakings 3-4 times - particularly from 3:30am on.  She's not hungry and I don't feed her at night but she still doesn't seem to sleep well.  I still swaddle her but she's a large baby and can always pull her arms out.  The one night when I was able to keep her arms swaddled she slept through with 1 paci insertion.  All theother nights paci doens't help, sh/pat doesn't help, generally I walk the floors with her to calm her down and get her back to sleep ( she's spirited).  ALthough I always start with sh/pat to try to eliminate me as a prop.  She seems to want to suck on her fingers, but she doesn't fall asleep doing that and then is awake as a result.  Do I swaddle her with one arm out and trust over time she'll learn to fall back to sleep with her fingers?  Or should I by another swaddler that might keep her arms tighter.  (I use the velcro swaddle kiddopotomus or something like that.  I was looking on line that the miracle swaddle might be more effective with her arms.)
I know that soon she won't need the swaddle so I'm not looking to buy another one that I won't need, but I'm really tired and not sure what to do here.  ANy insight would be great!  ( I asked hubby for help and he asked if I fed her.... no help so I'm hoping to get some better help in this board.  )

[deckchariot]

You could try leaving an arm or two out and see if she'll find her fingers that way.  That's what we did with dd and it worked, she did eventually find her thumb (it didn't take long) and she still sucks her thumb when she's falling asleep.  I'd say try arm(s) out for a few days and see if that helps, if not, we LOVED the Miracle Blanket (and you can do arms out in that as well.)

hth
michelle

[Deb1216]

I think it depends on the baby. Some really need to be swaddled, and tighter is better, but if you have a more spirited type (as my first was), at about 2-3 months the swaddle got her angrier and angrier. Leaving her arms out seemed to keep her happy because she did have the access to her hands. I like the one hand option as a compromise. Good luck!

[katemom]

Hi,

I'm in the same boat - if my little guy gets his hands out and sucks on his fingers, there will be no sleep until he gets reswaddled.  It's totally frustrating!  I'm like you, I don't know if I should just start the weaning transition and see if he can just get used to it, or if I just need to get more aggressive on the swaddling to make sure he stays in there.  I would rather move towards ditching the swaddle since that's where we all get to eventually, but if he's not ready, I know he'll just suffer with poor sleep and I don't need any more problems with sleep issues!  (And we just started settling rather than feeding during the night also - but my hubby offers the same solution every time he wakes up, why don't you feed him! - and then I go into my sermon about how he won't feed when he gets up in the morning, and that he's slept through the night enough times to trust that he most likely isn't waking due to hunger, but by the time I've explained myself, he's fallen back asleep again!  Lucky man.)

katemom

[toriaum]

Hi hear you on the husband back to sleep part!

Well I tried leaving one arm out two nights ago and it was a success.  I heard her stir at her usual 4am time but all of a sudden it was 6am and she was ready to eat.   (Although her other arm came out also and her fingers were really cold.)

Last night I tried the same thing but at 4am both arms were out of the swaddle and she needed me to get her back to sleep.  Although I reswaddled her and sh/patted her back to sleep in 5 minutes so that was still better than its been. 

I'm going to try it again tonight and see.  It's funny, I could set an alarm by her 4am wakeups...

I'm also having an issue because she's up at 6am ready to eat but she really isn't awake.  So her first nap is right after eating ( although she doesn't fall asleep eating, I can just tell she's tired still and I put her back down).  But then the rest of the day routine is off because of this early morning nap.  Our routine becomes ESAS and by the evening it's sort of a guessing game.  Oh well, maybe as she sleeps better she'll wake up more rested ( hopefully)!

Thanks for the help!
-Victoria