How long did you swaddle your baby for?

[Karmamother]

My DD is 16 weeks & has been swaddled since birth. It was, & still is, a great way to help her get to sleep. However, when I try & BF her without swaddling, whether during the day or at bedtime, she often flails her arms around which makes it not very relaxing for either of us. Also, she now knows that when I wrap her up it's a cue for sleep which has helped at bedtime.
What I want to know is.... am I going to have to swaddle her forever?? Obviously, once she can move around swaddling will be pointless. Has anyone swaddled for a long time & how did you get them out of the habit, IYSWIM?

[bramblina]

I swaddled ds for sleep but not for breastfeeding. He liked his milk so much nothing would disturb that! Anyway...He's 7 months now and we only stopped swaddling 2 months ago. For my ds it was also a great helper in prolonging his sleep duration, arms akimbo would usually be the cause of early waking, unnecessary feeding etc, and like you I had visions of him being like this till he was 16 ...one night I went to put him to bed and when I swaddled him he faught against it, so I tried again and he really wasn't keen, so I thought sod it, we'll have to find out what happens eventually, and he did sleep through that night so we went on to use his grobag from there and all is hunkydory still. HTH

[bramblina]

So what I meant in a short version is he decided for himself at around 5 months and it worked fine. Oooh I can't half ramble...

[Karmamother]

Thanks, Bramblina. Don't worry about the rambling, if it was an Olympic sport I'd win the Gold!!
You've got me thinking. She occasionally sleeps through & there seems to be no connection to how many evening (cluster) feeds she gets. I wonder if she sleeps through when she stays swaddled with no escapage of arms.

[bramblina]

If my ds ever woke when I hadn't expected him to, it was always due to a Houdini moment. No matter how tight that blanket was, two little hands would always be out waving! So we came to the conclusion that it really helped him to sleep for longer. I thought exactly like you, and did worry when to stop doing it. If he woke and was still swaddled, he was simply needing fed.
I wonder if it's to do with a certain part of development and learning, month 5 was definitely a big learning month, and he became more independent IYSWIM, with opinions and views almost, I guess that's why he protested to being swaddled. Oh oh I've started something and he's not even walking!

[kiskidee]

swaddled dd till she was 8 months. i continued because it helped her sleep plus she has eczema and it kept her from scratching it. once I got the eczema under control I stopped swaddling as and experiment to see how she'd sleep and she slept fine. no sleeping thru tho!

[Karmamother]

Thanks for the messages. She also manages to get her hands out during the night & her litle hands get really cold. I think I'll keep going with it until she protests too much.

[RuthT]

I swadled till 4 months, but it really depends on your baby. Some have the moro reflex for quite a long time so swaddling will help them settle and stay asleep.
I wouldn't worry about it - i'd just go with your little one she'll lose the reflex over time and one day she'll struggle out of it and stay asleep or nap without it and you'll know.

[pucca]

I swaddled for as long as i could keep dd in there lol, got her off to sleep like a dream but then when she could "escape" it was a bit of a nightmare as she didn't know what to do with her arms, soon got over that though.

[anchovies]

After a while we left one arm out (can't remember how old though - sorry!) and let him get used to that before we unwrapped him completely. Didn't take long I don't think.

[kiskidee]

the trick to keep arms swaddled is to straighten the arms down to their sides while wrapping them.

[sharklet]

I swaddled her until she was about 4 or 5 months old, then we went straight to a sleeping bag.

If her arms escap (DD's did all the time) our midwfe showed us a way of swaddling where you wrap the baby's arms in the cloth instead of just wrapping them as a whole. There must be some diagrams somewhere onthe webas its almost impossible to describe. But it worked pretty well with DD, by the end she was getting her hands out, but when it mattered she stayed put as it were.

[Karmamother]

sharklet, thanks. I found a website ages ago with diagrams showing how to keep the hands in. For some reason I've got out of the habit of doing it that way. She definately sleeps longer when her arms stay in. The other thing is she's started sucking her thumb so if I can stop her doing that for as long as possible then we may stop her being a future thumb-sucker.

[Kelly1978]

I think my dts were swaddled until about 6 months. Was rather annoying actually - had to be swaddled throughout summer, when it was really hot, then come winter they were sleeping on their fronts completely uncovered.
dt1 had a short time in a sleepign bag, but wasn't that keen. dt2 had a few weeks of being wrapped tightly with his arms free before losing the swaddle altogther.
I'm sure I read on here of one mnetter who had a toddler that still liked being swaddled in a duvet.