Having a Baby

A Miracle?

The challenge of parenting an infant, is that each one is so different.  Tips that work for one baby may not work for the next. So when you get advice on a difficulty you may be having, you of course want to run home and try it out, but often you wind up frustrated when what worked for Jane’s baby doesn’t work for yours. Consequently, any time I hear about the “magic solution” for getting a baby to sleep, I am skeptical.

This is true for advice or baby gadgets, but specifically I’m talking about the swaddle. It has seen a recent comeback in the last few years thanks to many popular baby sleep products like Dr. Harvey Karp’s “Happiest Baby on the Block”. With all these big names behind it, it seems like it must be the key to infant sleep. Well, yes and no.

Let’s be honest, a swaddle is just a fancy name for a blanket wrapped around a baby. No special equipment is needed, despite what the companies that sell these products will tell you.

The only thing you need is a large baby blanket, a baby, and the arcane knowledge of the method for wrapping the blanket. But thanks to the internet and YouTube, many of those methods seem to be common knowledge these days.  So there’s no excuse not to know how to swaddle.

I won’t delve into the mechanics or techniques behind wrapping a swaddle since you can easily find that information in books or videos.  My only personal tip is — tighter is better. 

 Nice, But Not the Sole Solution

Alone, a swaddle is like a shovel without a handle — it’s provides an incomplete solution. Unless you combine it with other elements and use it properly it may be a hindrance rather than a help to your baby sleeping comfortably.  I speak from personal experience and weeks of wondering why the miraculous transformation wasn’t taking place in my baby’s sleep habits.

There are now many so different products on the market that are promoted as the “miracle” for baby sleep. Be patient since it may require some trial and error before you achieve optimal results.

 Where Do We Go Wrong?

With just about every swaddle on the market, our daughter was a Houdini. No matter how tightly we wrapped her up, she would wiggle and twist her body until she had at least an arm free, at which point she was wide awake and ready to party. The struggling alone often kept her from ever trying to get to sleep and she would end up frustrated and crying because she couldn’t move her arms. Even with other methods of calming as touted in many popular books, if the swaddle was on — she wasn’t happy. I gave up and threw the blanket into the corner and wrote it off as a failure.

Strangely, I had already noticed that, even though she despised being wrapped while awake, she didn’t mind or notice when she was asleep. This is where I arrived at the following technique.

 How To Get It To Work

First of all, I don’t want to tout specific products, but we have had good luck with the “sack” style sleeper that integrates a swaddle in the small sizes. It worked primarily for us because rather than fighting the swaddle while awake, you can allow your little one to fall asleep in the sack part and then lay the swaddle into the crib face up. Then just place the sleeping baby onto the swaddle panel, wrap it around and fasten up the velcro as instructed on the package. This will then prevent those involuntary muscle movements associated with night-time waking.

 Other Tools to Add

The key with swaddling also has been to integrate it with white noise. White noise has been popular because it simulates the loud rushing sound of the mother’s womb.  Our goal is to recreate that noisy environment to comfort the little one recently evicted from the womb who may look to this noise for comfort. It is said that louder is better, up to a point. Let trial and error, as well as common sense, be your guide when turning up the volume.

I hope this information can provide help or comfort to someone who, like me, ended up scouring the internet late at night wondering what I was doing wrong. The baby books are good for the general case, but as I stated before, every baby is different and experience should be your guidance. Your baby will teach you as you go what s/he needs. Trust me, there’ll be no mistaking things when you do it wrong and when you do it right it will hopefully lead you to a blissful night of sleep. (At least a few hours in a row at least.)