Swaddling, when to stop?

[mumma bear]

I was just wondering when people stopped swaddling their babies and why?

DS is 4 1/2 months old and i still swaddle him but he has found his fingers and now wants to suck them to put himself to sleep, normally his hands would be in the muslin wrap and he would just fall asleep. I would prefer he didn't suck his fingers but he is doing is almost continuously when he is up so i think he is going to win this battle.

Should i keep swaddling and hope this phase passes or stop swaddling and let him go for it with his fingers?

DD never had this problem, she was happy to be swaddled until 10 months when she went into a sleeping bag. She never wanted her fingers.

[misskittyfantastico]

When my DD got to about 4 months she became a houdini! We were wrapping and re-wrapping for hours each night until finally we just started leaving her arms out for day sleeps and then night sleeps...now she doesn't even tolerate being covered by a blanket!

[pegasus]

I only started swaddling DS properly at about 3months. I kept it up till he was about 12months! I guess the answer is whatever works for you.

[mamachops]

I stopped swaddling DD's arms at about 8 weeks after I was advised in a 'class' that they should have their arms out by this age as they may start turning over and wouldn't be able to push up to breathe otherwise, which worried me a bit. DD was NOT happy about this, and it struck me that if her arms were tightly swaddled up, she probably wouldn't have the leverage to turn over anyway:detective:, so we carried on. I couldn't get her off to sleep otherwise.

However, since it had started turning cold I moved her into a sleeping bag about a week later and suddenly she seemed perfectly happy with her arms out. :rolleyes: . Now she associates the sleeping bag with going to sleep instead of being swaddled.

Oh incidentally, she now has her hand in her mouth from the minute she wakes, which I'm not happy about, I don't want the dummy stuffed in her chops either!

[Mummy_Johnno]

So naive i know but what is swaddling?

I thought it was when you wrap babies tightly to mimic the confined space in the womb. Am i right?

If that is the case ....... do you have their little arms straight by their sides, bent across the chest or something else?????

Thanks

[mumma bear]

You are right. Swaddling it where you wrap them up tightly in a muslin or something similar.

Personally i wrap with arms by sides but there are many different ways to wrap. With DD i wrapped with hands on chest and then when she was a little older i did an angle wrap so her hands were in the muslin but up by her head.

I think i will keep it up so a little longer i really don't want a finger/thumb sucker.

[~Danni~]

Our bub is 7 months now and we are still wrapping her, we alll get a better night sleep that way at the moment!! We had stopped for a month or two at about 4 months but she wasnt sleeping so our health nurse suggested wrapping her again, apparently quite a few people do it till at least 12 months. What ever works for yuor family I guess!:)