Swaddling advice please!

[Laur2017]

Hi all, my DS is 14 weeks old and we swaddle him at nights which has been working really well. Recently, he has started to break free from his swaddle, is this a sign that he's now getting too old for his swaddling? Thanks!

It isn’t recommended that babies are swaddled at all. Have a look at NICE guidelines and the Lullaby trust regarding safe sleeping.

Lullaby trust don't advise for or against swaddling (see here www.lullabytrust.org.uk/safer-sleep-advice/swaddling-slings/) but don't give any advice when to stop. I know the NHS advise no at the moment but for some babies it can be the only way to get them to sleep. We had to choose between no sleep, swaddling or co sleeping and decided swaddling was the least risky as we don't have a good set up for co sleeping. Just don't go too tight round hips and watch for overheating.

I think with ds we stopped when he was big enough to go into a sleeping bag at night. That seemed to work with him. We've got dd in grosnugs so will probably carry on until she outgrows them. Why not try a night without a swaddle and see what happens? Think swaddling should be phased out as they can start to move more.

At 14 weeks he's probably too big for a full swaddle. You could try a half swaddle so you leave the arms out or go straight to a sleeping bag

We used a Swaddleme blanket/wrap with our boys and they were a godsend to getting some settled sleep.
Obviously once they got more mobile we stopped swaddling as I didn't want them to be able to roll onto their front and then not be able to roll back again. But by that age they had control of their arms and didn't need swaddling any more.

I second summer infant swaddleme wraps. They made swaddling easier, and had room for legs to move freely like a sleeping bag. They also have transitional swaddles called wrapsacks, so you can move from having both baby's arms swaddled, to one arm, to just the body feeling the comfort of swaddling with the arms free.
My DS loved his swaddle, it was a great as he was comforted and we all slept better. We stopped using the swaddleme around 4/5 months when he learnt to roll and he started to break free, but then we moved to the wrapsack so he could still feel swaddled with his arms free.
Oh, and on the summer infant website it says that the swaddleme shouldn't be used once they break free and learn how to roll.