22 week old swaddled, not sleeping and flipping himself over!!!!!!!!!!

[NessieD]

My DS is 22 weeks and in the last week his sleeping has completely gone to pot!! at the moment we swaddle him as he cannot sleep with his arms out and will kick off sheets so we have him in a very lightweight swaddle with his arms only swaddled inside a Grobag. This has worked great for a while, however he has started to flip himself ove in his sleep and then wakes up crying, usually he wakes at 5.30am and I can stick the dummy back in and he will go back to sleep after about 6ish until I wake him at 7am, however he is now waking at 5.30am on his front and I then have o go back in every 10-15 minutes to put him back on his back. I have tried putting him to sleep on his front with his arnms out but no joy. He is being weaned and recently moved to 3 meals a day (on advice from doc as he has reflux) and we had two nights initially where he slept through, but that hasn't happened again. I feed him at 11am before I go to bed (bottle) and am not sure if this could be disturbing him? I have to go back to a prettt stressful job in 4 weeks and cannot function on this little sleep!! any help and advice appreciated!!

As painful as it sounds...and I know b/c my son is the same age and swaddled too...maybe it's time to wean him from being swaddled? It might be a few painful nights but he will learn (so I've read anyways). I have to get my son off the swaddle soon too and I'm not looking forward to it at all!

I agree, but HOW THE HELL do I do it???? have tried one arm out, going cold turkey etc and none of them worked. The only thing that I can think of is trying going completely cold turkey and if he doesn't sleep then he doesn't sleep and hope that he will learn

I don't know...let me know when you find out! Ha ha! I actually tried cold turkey 2 nights ago. He fell asleep on his own but woke up 3 hrs later. The night was pretty brutal. He cried primarily through it all. I decided that I'm going to continue swaddling him until my doctor's check up at the end of the month. Then I'm sure the doctor will have some advice for me. I'll take sleep for now!

I've now managed to get him to sleep for 45 minutes for the last few mornings with his arms free, hopefully this will get progressively better each day!! I have also ordered a Safe-T-Sleep Sleepwrap which will stop him flipping over and whacking his head on the side of the cot all night long!! fingers crosse that will help!! were off on holiday at the end of May so have to get him out of his swaddle and bag by then otherwise he'll boil!!!

Nessie - I did what it looks like you've started trying. My DTs always went down like a dream for their morning nap and so I started unswaddling them for it and after about a week and a half they were ready to brave the night unswaddled too. I was really nervous about it but I figured if their nap was messed up then we always had time to catch up during the day! (We did try one night of cold turkey to begin with and it was a complete nightmare...hence the softly softly approach afterwards...!)