My son is 4 months old and i am trying to break him from being swaddled because he is getting frustrated with it. The issue is that he flails his arms and legs, which wakes him up. Does anyone have any suggestions to make this transition easier on him and also mommy?
I agree with removing one arm from swaddle. We did this for about 4-5 days. I suppose you could do it for whatever period you wanted. After 4-5 days, we removed the other arm. My baby loved being swaddled and this was an easy way to break the habit.
I would just let him flail until he gets used to it. Shouldn't take that long. At 4 mos, he's probably ready to work on rolling over onto his tummy (and back again), so it's no surprise that he's flailing.
He'll get used to the freedom in a couple of days. In the meantime, you'll have to grin and bear it. Soothe him however you choose when he wakes up, but don't try to re-swaddle him. He'll find his groove in a short time.
I agree with the sleep sacks. We used those when we transitioned my son our of his swaddlers. Worked great.
I remember this phase. :) We transitioned our daughter from a swaddle to a sleep sack with something called a Peke-Moe. It's basically a sleep sack with the arm holes sewn together. This freed up her arms, but wouldn't let her scratch her face or hit herself in the head. It worked so greta, she was in the sleep sack in less than a week!
we started doing a reverse-type swaddle...just tucking the blanket really tight around her instead of wrapping her in it. she would flail, and loosen it up but not get completely free. we left it looser and looser until she didnt mind, and now she is in a sleep sack.
We swaddled my daughter forever for the very same reason. It was so bad that she started to get out of the swaddle and so we would swaddle her tightly in a blanket and then put one of the velcro swaddlers on top just to hold her in securely =) When we finally decided to break her we started by not swaddling her feet, once she got used to that we let one arm free and then when she got used to that we let other arm free. She also really slept well in the sleep sack blankets, you know the ones with that you put your arms through then zip up but your feet are inside of the sack? I hope that make sense.. We didn't try to break her of it until she was about 6 months old and it was a lot easier than we thought it would be.
Good luck!
I went from swaddling the sleep sacks. Although they do not hold their arms in it keeps their legs together. Once my daughter grew out of the sleep sacks she did fine with no blanket.
I really struggled with this too. At around 6 months I began loosley swaddling for nap times while still tightly swaddling at night. As she adjusted to the looseness at naps, I got looser at nights. Then, I stopped swaddling her arms for naps, followed by no arms at night. Eventually she was sleeping just fine at naps without the swaddle at all, so at night we tried no swaddle and to my amazement she slept just fine. Good luck, I know how hard it is when you just want your little one to sleep good!
Try a Woombie- it is a sleep sack w/out arm holes so they feel swaddled but it is zipped so they can't kick out. We used that until 9mos and then went to the sleep sack. http://www.thewoombie.com
I went through this with my son. Try swaddling your son so that one arm is in and one is out, and get him used to sleeping that way before you attempt to cold-turkey it with both arms. This makes the transition easier for the baby - only one arm flailing! I think it took my son about 3-4 nights to adjust to this before we were able to remove the other arm. Good luck!
