Stopping swaddling....

Question

My son has always loved to be swaddled tightly. He will stop fussing as soon as even one arm is wrapped. He is now 3 months old, as of yesterday, and still needs to be swaddled to sleep. The problem is that now he wriggles and squirms and gets his arms out. Those free little arms wave and swing all over the place, keeping him awake, or waking him up. I have tried to get him to sleep without swaddling. His natural instinct is to hold his arms straight up in the air, perpendicular to his body. However, he then starts to fall asleep, his arms fall, and he startles himself awake. Once in awhile his arms will be free and relaxed and he will be asleep, but it never lasts more then 10 minutes and he is crying because his arm movements are keeping him awake. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

my daughter did this... and to be honest... she still gets swaddled.. not tightly just comfortably and shes 11 months now... she loves it... and sleeps better..  

Answer 2

I swaddle my 3 month old when he goes to bed for the night. During the day, I lay him in his crib with a heavy blanket over him. He loves being swaddled. Try swaddling him with his arms outside the blanket, so he gets used to what his arms are doing. Let him nap like that during the day, then swaddle him tight at night. It is a good thing for them to use there arms, though. Thats how they learn to roll over.

Answer 3

My daughter was 5 months be for we could stop swaddling her to sleep. She loved it too. I found that getting a sightly bigger stretchy cotton or light thermal blanket worked best I could get her wrapped tighter and she couldn't get her arms out. Good luck.