Swaddle Blankets, Do You Need This Baby Thing?

I highly recommend swaddling a newborn baby, but what kind of swaddle blankets should you use?

We swaddled all three of our kids.  In fact, we ended up swaddling our kids until they were each about 6 months old.  Most babies really do prefer to be swaddled.  They may resist at first, but you will see if the swaddle is done correctly they will calm down, will become relaxed, and will sleep longer stretches.  We tried a few of the blankets made for swaddling, but none of them worked for our children.  We ended up using a traditional square receiving blanket and when that became to small, I cut a soft cotton sheet to make a larger square blanket.  You see for a swaddle to actually work, the baby’s arms must stay pretty straight at his/her side.  Your baby should not be able to wiggle his/her hands out of that blanket.  I did find that many of those swaddle blankets just did not fit my children very well, and they would still be able to wiggle themselves to freedom.  Then of course they would wake up crying, and we would have to swaddle them all over again.

Learning how to Swaddle correctly can be tricky.  We had a hard time, until I came across and book and DVD called “The Happiest Baby On The Block“, by Dr. Harvey Karp.  He really teaches you how to do a proper swaddle and some other good tips to help calm a fussy baby.  I prefer the DVD because I found it helpful to see the swaddling in action as apposed to reading about it.

So, to wrap it up so to speak, I recommend using a square blanket to swaddle your baby, and not spend a fortune on swaddle blankets that don’t work that well anyway.  If you need some help learning the technique or some other useful tips for calming a fussy baby, I highly recommend getting the book or DVD for “The Happiest Baby On The Block.”