How To Get Your Baby To Sleep Without a Swaddle.
- The Involved Dad
- Jul 12, 2018
- 2 min read
Adventure: Swaddle Struggles
Our little Rose recently turned 5 months. Wow! Where has the time gone? At this point she is growing and developing by leaps and bounds. She can sit up with assistance, rollover from belly to back on occasion, can grasp and hold objects, has discovered her voice, and is oh so close to crawling. One thing that The Mrs and I feel like she is struggling with however, is letting go of her swaddle.
She’s shown signs that she’s ready to ditch the swaddle, however whenever we gave it a shot she
just couldn’t fall or stay asleep. So we started slow. First we untucked her legs only. This lead to a week or so of feet flaying, but she has since grown accustomed to it. Next we tried the one arm in and one arm out technique. This seemed to work well once she learned to control her arm a bit. She was able to fall asleep and stay asleep relatively well with this technique.
We did this for a while until it seemed like we weren’t progressing anymore. Then we tried a no arm, body swaddle only. This worked on occasion, but would often lead to Rose being unable to fall and/or stay asleep. So then something gave us the idea to switch the arm we left unswaddled. After trying this for the past week or so it seems to be working well. The last few nights I’ve only loosely swaddled the one arm. This allows her to fall asleep, and take the arm out during the night.
We’re finally moving forward again. Yay for progress! I just put Rose down for a nap with both arms out and she had no problem falling asleep. It’s been 15 minutes so far and she’s stayed asleep just fine. We cross our fingers that the progress continues, and that our little one will be out of her swaddle and into sleep sacks soon.
Tips and Lessons Learned - Start slow, unswaddleing the feet/legs is a great place to start. - Try to remember that the baby controls the pace. - As soon as your baby masters one arm being out, switch arms. - After having switched arms, loosely swaddle the one arm and let baby bring it out as she’s ready. - Don’t worry, or hesitate to move backwards on occasion. If she’s having a particularly hard night, go back to a full swaddle if needed. - Rememebee to focus on the bigger picture. - Have fun, keep your cool, slow progress is still progress. If it doesn’t work, change it.