Author Topic: Rachelle can I ask you a question about Swaddling  (Read 2092 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

FrasersMum

  • Guest
Rachelle can I ask you a question about Swaddling
« on: July 29, 2005, 07:00:00 am »
Hi Rachelle,

I have read a number of the posts on this board where you have suggested swaddling to help with night wakings.  My LO is 4 months and just last night we had a shocking night with wake ups (our first experience with it really since he was a newborn).

Just a question with swaddling - we haven't been swaddling for a couple of months because he was sleeping well without it but I am prepared to reintroduce if needs be - would you suggest swaddling with an arm out??  He sometimes can find his fingers although other times he just thrashes about and hits himself in the face and wakes himself up...  When you suggest a tight swaddle, what exactly are you suggesting?

Many thanks
Jo

Offline rachelle

  • Resident BW Chatterbox!
  • *****
  • Showing Appreciation 8
  • Gender: Female
  • Posts: 565
  • Oregon/USA
  • Location: USA/Oregon/Willamette Valley
    • my blog
Rachelle can I ask you a question about Swaddling
« Reply #1 on: July 29, 2005, 13:06:43 pm »
I am sure I sound like quite the broken record suggesting swaddling always, but let me tell you why.  you have probably seen this on one of my posts.  When Kalli was about 3.5 or 4 months old, she started rolling over.  Well, she was awake one nite and I was having a really hard time getting her back to sleep.  Kiandra (dd #1) was also awake a lot that nite...in fact, they took turns waking us up, so that we were up almost all nite with one of them.  Anyways, finally, I decided to bring kalli to bed with me.  She was fed and dry, but just wouldn't sleep.  When I brought her to bed with me, she was just laying against me moving her legs (not jerky movements),  it was like how Tracy described in her books, kind of how they get an itch in their bones and limbs.  So, dh had been perfecting his super-duper tight swaddle, and he swaddled her up and she LITERALLY went right to sleep and we didn't hear another sound out of her.

As far as whether or not to swaddle with one hand out...that's completely up to you.  If you can do a tight enought swaddle with one hand out, definitely do that. 

I will try to get dh to swaddle kalli later so I can take some pics of it.  You need a rather large blanket (the ones we used were 42x42 inches, ones that webfoot makes/sells). 

I will get some pics in a bit to show you.  I used swaddling with kiandra until about 4 months or so, and swore by it then.  But we swaddled kalli for a lot longer, and definitely recommend it to everyone now.  Yes, she might have fussed when we swaddled her, but as soon as she laid down she would go to sleep.  And it caused her no harm physically or developmentally--she's been doing the army crawl since just over 5 months, regular crawling for a few months now, and is about to walk.  I know there are moms on here who still use a modified swaddle well past a year!

I will post pics later!!
Rachelle
Mommy to
Kiandra Diane 6-11-03
Kalli Louise 9-20-04
And Kiersten Angeline 4-25-06