These days, all the “baby 101” and “how to” parenting books will tell you that a great way to sooth a newborn is to imitate the womb. So, we swaddle them tightly to mimic the close quarters your baby (or twins!) experience in the womb, we play white noise in the nursery to imitate the swooshing sounds when your baby is in utero, we keep the lights dim, and we hold them close and are told to enjoy lots of skin-to-skin contact. And, I think all of these things are GREAT things to do with your newborn baby. I think imitating the womb helps your little one(s) to transition better into the "real world!"
BUT, there comes a point where it is neither beneficial nor safe to follow all these practices. Specifically, I’m talking about swaddling. By around 3 months, most babies are ready to be transitioned out of being swaddled. What you’re looking for is either your baby consistently breaking out of their swaddle despite your best + snuggest swaddling tactics, OR when your baby is showing signs of TRYING to roll — yep, that’s right, not after they are flipping back and forth effortlessly, but once they are attempting to roll.
I know what you’re thinking...oh great..it seems that just as you have gotten comfortable with your bedtime routine, you’re now being told you need to change it. So, I’m here to share my experience with what worked for the twins. We had them transitioned in just a few days!
Some background: at the time when we transitioned the twins out of their SwaddleMe’s (around 3 1/2 months,) they were already sleeping in their own room, in their own cribs. My husband and I tried to help the twins become good independent sleepers from day one, so they slept in individual bassinets in our room for 3 months, and then we moved them into their cribs.
We didn’t use any fancy transitioning swaddle, we just used the SwaddleMe’s we had been using from day one. We started by taking one arm out, then eventually both arms out, and would just Velcro the swaddle around their chest.
Day 1:
Naps — one arm out
Bedtime — no arms out (swaddled like normal)
Day 2:
Naps — one arm out
Bedtime — one arm out
Day 3:
Naps — both arms out (swaddle velcroed around chest)
Bedtime — one arms out
Day 4:
Naps — both arms out (swaddle velcroed around chest)
Bedtime — both arms out (swaddle velcroed around chest)
After they successfully made the transition of having the SwaddleMe velcroed just around their torso, we put them in Dreamland Baby weighted sleep-sacks. I highly suggest these sleep-sacks which are lightly weighted and help baby drift back to sleep between REM cycles. To save 15% on these weighted sleep-sacks use code KATIECARLSON.
Tips:
If your baby is waking repeated at night during the transition, you may consider the “partial night” strategy. Where you will put your baby to bed with arm(s) out, but if they wake up, you can swaddle him back up with arms inside the swaddle. With this technique, each night try to go a bit longer with arm(s) free. Consider if your baby had both arms out when they woke up, to just put one arm back in and see if that helps them fall back asleep.
Feel free to stay on each "day" of the transition for several days if you feel like your baby needs more time to adjust to not being swaddled. We went at this pace because the twins were handling the transition well. Some parents will take weeks to make the transition, whereas some will go "cold turkey!"
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