Swaddling is often a good way to keep a baby comforted and settled while sleeping, but in the long run it’s more effective.
But most of the time, babies fall in love with the swaddle and often wake up when they leave it at night.
Today, I have a step-by-step plan to gradually remove your baby from the crib and learn to sleep, sleep, without needing to wrap.
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– Hello, I’m Dana. Welcome to this week’s video.
Cuddling an infant can be a very effective tool. Most newborns find comfort in being tightly wrapped. It reminds them of what happened to them in the womb when they didn’t have much room to move around. So I definitely encourage people in the newborn phase to try the swaddle.
Now, there are babies out there who don’t like it, so you don’t have to force the issue. Try it several times in several different situations. And if it helps, great. And if not, that’s okay too.
I just want to warn you, today, that sometimes the sheet can be what we call a sleep aid. So my recommendation for a swaddle is to use it for 10 weeks or so. And after 10 weeks, now you start to move slowly and leave one arm out maybe to sleep or double or sleep for a week. So you leave all hands here and there for the rest of the day or sleep for another week. You just go hip for a week. And then by the end of the third week, you’re off the grid.
My advice is to switch to a sleeping bag instead. The Zipadee-Zip sleeping bag is perfect. Also the Bitta Kidda sleeping bag is my favorite.
Now, what could happen, and if you’re listening and thinking, 10 weeks have come and gone, you may have a serious problem on your hands. And it’s a situation where the baby thinks he needs to sleep warm. But he will inevitably push it, at some point no matter how hard you tie him, he will still find a way to escape, feel the discomfort of being free and open, and maybe cry for you to go back and tie him again.
So then you find yourself five times a night and go back to your child’s room just to tie him up again. Then you have a problem. So how do you get rid of yourself? Well, there is no easy way. Now that it’s dependent on the prop, we just need to get rid of the cold. There won’t be any way to slow it down or phase it out, because anything less than what he’s used to will upset him.
So let’s just remove it. Starting tonight at bedtime, there are no more blankets. Again, moving into a different type of sleeping bag can help with that change a bit. But you have to prepare yourself that there will be a few days here and there is a learning curve that needs to be done. They have to get used to, hmm, what am I going to do with myself if I’m not wrapped tightly? And there may be some protests, and there may be some broken sleep going on in those first few nights. And you can do whatever way you want to deal with it.
If you want to do the Sleep Sense Program with a way to stay in the room, or you want to create a style of leaving, the good news is that it should only take, you know, four or five nights for the child to get used to this new freedom and start sleeping well and throughout the night.
Thanks for watching today. Sleep well.
If your baby, toddler or child is having trouble sleeping through the night, help is just a click away! The Sleep Sense Program has helped more than 57,00 parents to get their children to sleep 11-12 hours overnight AND taking long naps, relaxing during the day. If you’re ready to get started today – I look forward to helping you!
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