Waking up when breaking swaddle, help??

[Vonni30]

DD is 3months and to be fair a very good sleeper. We have been trying the putting down drowsy but awake and she is sleeping from around 8pm-4am. Problem is during this time she is wriggling an arm free out of her miracle blanket. Once the arm is out it's like she thinks its morning and starts to coo away to herself. I don't want to encourage 4am as a time to get up so this is my quandary; do I swaddle her and feed her back to sleep (if she will!) or if are you supposed to leave them to babble in the dark and hope that they get the message no one is playing and eventually fall asleep on her own again?

Hmm my LO is only 9wks so wasn't going to give advice, but as no one else has responded my view would be to leave to coo, and try to tuck the arm in more tightly next time. This is on the basis that 1. You can start weaning off swaddling from about this age and 2. Act like they are in another room where possible, so low level grizzle and cooing to be ignored, hopefully she will learn to nod off even with an arm free.

Alternatively, I would consider re-swaddling when you go to bed if she is deeply asleep, so hopefully won't break free till morning, tho I know this will likely involve totally unwrapping as hard to do the arms without taking the legs out too.

I have a similar issue with mine, she can kick a leg out the miracle blanket by the end of the night, but I'm still feeding at night so just tighten.

Tried leaving her to babble bit after a bit it turns to anger and frustration till I have to pick her up. :( trying to avoid the feed to sleep that happened with my son but she won't take shoogling or patting. Purely just takes a feed and goes back to sleep if in the early hours. We might be hitting another growth spurt now though as she woke every 3hours last night. Hoping it's not the 4month sleep regression as feeding to sleep doesn't help her know how to settle. :(

If it's just her wiggling free of her swaddle that's waking her, have you considered switching to baby sleeping bags? It stopped my DD from waking up so much, although I was also useless at swaddling.

My SIL used something called a Swaddlepod. It's got a zip up the front so no risk of escape. If you Google them, they're available at Amazon, Tesco etc.

I have just gone through this with DS who is 11 weeks. He slept so well in a swaddle - it would send him straight off to sleep and would give him a good few hours of rest. Eventually throughout the night he would pop an arm out but he still slept well.

But at 10 weeks he started fighting the swaddle as soon as I put him down and although he did self settle well after this I thought it was probably time to move on.

The first time I tried him in a sleeping bag he had such a bad night I put him back into the swaddle after his night feed! But I tried again after a few days and he was a bit calmer and progressively each day he has got used to the sleeping bags. I've changed him to a long sleeved vest (rather than a footed sleep suit) and use a 1.5tog bag and this has helped. They have some lovely sleeping bags in Tesco at the mo btw!

I have found that giving him more 'independence' in the sleeping bag has helped with his early morning self settling. The day doesn't start until 7am here zzzzzzz so after his 4/ 5am feed I put him back in his cot - sometimes he sleeps but sometimes he seems happy in his cot staring at the blinds and making little noises! I haven't worked out the pattern yet of why he sometimes sleeps for longer!