5 month old cant decided if she wants swaddled of not !!!!!

[jackie21]

Hi, my 5 month DD has decided in the past week that she doesnt want to be swaddles, yet she wont fall asleep without being swaddled?

I try and just leave her not swaddled to do her own thing but she ends up getting really really fidgety and starts trying to hit the bars on her cot and pulls out her dummy then drops it then crys cause she wants it back. I finally give in and try to swaddle her but its a fight to get her swaddled, i need to keep hold of one of her arms whilst i wrap the blanket round her then do the same for the other arm. Then we have to wrap another blanket round her to keep her snuggly in. The she falls aleep fine !

I just dont think she knows what she wants and its starting to get really frustrating at naps and bed time. She used to be a really good sleeper, it was just a case of swaddling and thats it now its a fight.

My HV says i shouldnt be swaddling at 5 months and definetly shouldnt be double wrapping but i just dont know what to do. As soon as a hand gets out the swaddle it wakes her up.

She does also suffer from really bad wind from her milk. Shes been like that from birth, doc and hv says its normal and will go away after completely on solids. I do try and et as much wind up as possible but i never seem to get it all up and she is really twitchy and kicky during the night because of it.

Any suggestions please would be much appreciated !!

Five months old are starting to move - anything restricting them is just going to make them cross. May I suggest the half swaddle (lower half obviously )? She may also be teething and that may be disturbing her sleep. It is very hard being so small and not being able to get your message across - especially when something unspecific is wrong, very wrong, and you can't indicate it other than by crying and burping the national anthem tunelessly .

Have you considered sleeping bags - DD really took to hers after we'd swaddled, you can get very light ones and just use that - or is she getting too hot do you think - it is summer after all.

DS is currently sleeping with no covers on and DD has a sheet (they are a bit older than yours) but I think there is a big myth about babies being cold - frequently being too hot also wakes them.

In any case, whatever the problem is in three weeks it will change to a different problem - that's what babies do

If she falls asleep fine once she's swaddled then I don't see what the problem is. It sounds to me as though she is happy being swaddled. Yes it might be a fight to get her swaddled in the first place but then it's a fight to get a nappy on sometimes but it needs doing. If she was crying and fighting and unhappy once swaddled then it would be obvious that she didn't want swaddling. But as she's going off to sleep it sounds as though she's happy with that.
Make sure it's a tight swaddle so that her arm doesn't easily come out.

I would ignore the hv. There's no harm in swaddling a 5mo to go to sleep. I've done it with mine and not had any problems later. If your dd feels secure swaddled and sleeps that sounds like a good thing to me.

hi thanks for your responces, my dd does like to be swaddled initially but after about 30 minutes i garuntee theres an arm out, do matter how tight we do it. Once that arm/hand is out i think when she moves her head she hits herself in the face and gets a fright which disturbs her.

We always put DD is a sleeping bag at night, hve done for months now. We always have to because during the night she wiggles to the side and ends up with legs hanging out the cot and we are woken up with screams as her leg gets trapped, not a nice thing to be woken up with !! so the sleeping bag stops that happening.

She seems to change each sleep what she wants, i do try and let her take the lead. one day she will go to sleep with her arms not swaddled (normally if she is really tired) others she will start really fighting when she is swaddled and acting like she doesnt want to be swaddled, so when i unswaddle her and just do the bottom half she just starts playing with her dummy or trying to reach to hit the bars or the mattress.

we found the Peke MOe sleep sack worked great at this stage with our LO. Keeps them within the sleep sack but they can move around... I was surprised how much our LO loved it! www.pekemoe.co.nz all the best!