Dad is the Swaddle Master!

This is one of my favorite pics from Riley's 1st Photo session at 7 days old! But the reason I chose it for this post is to show the mastery of Kelly's swaddle!! A picture is worth a thousand words for those of you that may not know what swaddling is, like I didn't before Riley!

We learned of swaddling from the Happiest Baby on the Block dvd. Kelly and I watched it in desperation one afternoon when Riley was completely inconsolable! And it was AWESOME! It worked!! The dvd talks about the 5 S's of soothing a newborn. Dr. Harvey Karp produced the video based on his book of the same name. His theory is that the 1st 3 months of a baby's life are like the 4th trimester. They aren't really prepared to be out yet, but they have to be born because humans have such large brains. He talks about how animals are born able to walk for survival, but humans are born totally dependent on their parents. So the trick to helping them acclimate to life outside the womb is to recreate the womb environment as much as you can the 1st 3 months. To do that you do swaddling (makes them feel confined like the womb), shhshing (white noise like the womb), swinging & gentle shaking (very gently like they used to get jostled in the womb)...I can't for the life of me remember the other S's now. But the swaddling, shhshing and swinging worked best for us!

Swaddling is funny looking...people have called him wrapped up like a burrito, taco, tator tot, etc. But as funny looking as it may be, it's totally effective. We're STILL swaddling Riley at night although he's outgrown all his blankets, so we have now progressed to the kiddapotamus swaddle blanket with velcro! Velcro is your friend as they get older and stronger! My sister said it looks like a straight jacket! It's not like that! They love it - it reminds them of the womb and it keeps them warm and snuggled all night without having any loose blankets in the crib. You can't have loose blankets due to the risk of suffocation. I think I may have talked about this in a previous post, but little babies don't know how to breath out of their mouths, so if something obstructs their nasal passages (a blanket or the crib bumper) they will actually suffocate before they breath out of their mouths! Scary! I guess it's like that so they can still breath while they are nursing without choking.

The swaddling also helps keep them from waking themselves up with all their baby reflexes! If you just watch a baby sleep without a swaddle - you'll see how they accidentally hit themselves in the face and flail their arms around like crazy! It's no wonder they can't stay asleep at that age. As soon as we started swaddling, Riley immediately started sleeping longer at night.

And Dad's are MUCH better at it than Mom's! Kelly is definitely the swaddle master! The main reason is that Dad's aren't tentative about how tight to make the swaddle so it'll actually stay all night! Whereas, Riley would bust out of mine in about 2 seconds!

I've read that you should stop swaddling around 4-5 months of age so they are able to do their crib acrobatics which help them develop their gross motor skills for crawling, walking, etc. Gosh, do I dread the 1st few nights I have to wean myself from the swaddle! Notice I say I rather than Riley! ;)


Here's another early swaddle pic. He was around 6 weeks old in this pic because I remember it was when Kelly's parents were in town. And he feel asleep on our bed and we couldn't stop staring at him and marveling at how he looked like a complete ANGEL! Of course, during this time we knew Hell Boy would be arriving later so we had to capture it in a photo!