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How old is too old to swaddle a fussy infant?
Filed under: Health & Safety: Babies, Development/Milestones: Babies
One of my favorite things I learned at the hospital after our Juniper was born was swaddling
technique. I watched with interest the way each nurse swaddled her in our hospital room, taking in the differences
between the way the Chinese nurse and the Irish nurse and the Russian nurse swaddled her. By the time we left, I was a
novice in the swaddling arts, but in the ten months hence I have become something of a swaddling ninja: I can
swaddle a crabby infant with one hand tied behind my back while holding a leather-bound book of
Emerson's essays aloft in the other. And at ten months we still need to swaddle this child. Her
sleep difficulties are well
documented, and if she isn't swaddled
when she goes to sleep, she is completely unable to put herself back down should she wake. We have become swaddle
dependent. When she wakes up and is somehow able to houdini her way out of the swaddle, she stands up in her crib,
starts wailing and running a tin cup along the bars, tossing flaming pieces of paper on the floor and flashing Latin
gang signs at us. And this could go on for hours. So at ten months, I still swaddle her so tight she looks
like she should be strapped to Sacajawea's back on the Oregon coast. I lay her in the crib, pat her side,
sing a little and she falls asleep.
I’m aware that we are pushing it here, but I’m wondering about Guinness world record type swaddling here, because frankly the way things are going I think I’m going to be swaddling her with a bedsheet and kissing her goodnight when she’s 12. I’m afraid we’re planting the seeds of some Foucaultian obsession with confinement that will someday cause her therapist to discuss with her at length her parents’ laziness and inability to let her put herself back to sleep without the swaddle. How long is too long to swaddle a child?
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
12-18-2005 @ 7:03PM
Ann Adams said...Rebecca is 10. She swaddles herself. Every morning is the challenge of rolling the mummy Rebecca out of the top bunk without rolling her out on the floor.
Does it really make a difference? I'm not being snarky but some people like to wrap up in bedclothes and some don't so I'm just wondering why there's a time frame at all.
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12-18-2005 @ 7:03PM
Jen said...Who cares how old she is if it's still working. Parenting is nothing but trial and error - when you find something that finally works, scream Hallelujah from the mountain tops and keep doing it! :) I would have loved to continue swaddling my son, but by 3 months, he was so stinking big, he grew out of all his blankets! I like the bedsheet idea...I'll have to try that if my next one is another Goliath...:)
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12-18-2005 @ 7:03PM
Springtime said...I sewed four receiving blankets together to make a 'swaddle' blanket for my son when he was too big to be swaddled in his other blankets.
When she's a bit bigger she might like a toddler-sized sleeping bag :)
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12-18-2005 @ 7:03PM
Yoni said...We had the same problem with our daughter. We decided at around 10months to do a stepwise approach to unswaddling. We started by leaving her legs out, then an arm, then both arms then out completely. Usually had a ton of crying for the first night of each change. In retrospect we probably could have simply unswaddled her and had a few crappy night sleeps for all of us. Now she's 15 months and sleeps 12 hours straight unswaddled.
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