Stopping swaddling

I had one baby (Eliana) who would only sleep swaddled. It became a problem when she got old enough to break out of her swaddle and then could not get back to sleep. She was suffering from poorly treated reflux at the time which I did not know, so I may have done things differently had I known, but I decided to wean her from swaddling at some point. I started by swaddling just one arm (I had already stopped swaddling the legs because she was too big). She was a side sleeper so I’d put her to sleep on the the side that was not swaddled. Once she got used to that I started wrapping the other arm less tightly and let her get used to that for a while and then stopped swaddling altogether. It took a few weeks and then she was sleeping without swaddling which was a big relief to me.

We stopped cold turkey too, and Caden didn’t seem to care…I’m sure every baby is different though. You could try without it during a nap and see how he does before you do it at night.

My dd’s reflux made for some terrible sleeping and she also really needed to be swaddled! We swaddled for a really long time- 7 months if you can believe it- because we couldn’t get her weaned from it. We finally swaddled just one arm, then after a few weeks we unswaddled both arms and just the lower body. FINALLY we could nix it all together.

I would try the gradual approach at naptime first and see where you go from there. The purpose of our swaddling (in my “Mommy PhD” opinion) is that Sarah would wake herself up frantically sucking on her fingers trying to get relief from the reflux (she was a comfort eater). We had to swaddle her tightly to prevent her arms from being able to move. Once her reflux was under control, we gradually removed it all together (during naps first) and then finally at bedtime. GOOD LUCK!

If you want to continue with less worry, have you considered an Angel Care Monitor. Or one of my friends put bub in a sleeping sack adn then swaddled?