How to Teach Your Baby to Sleep Unswaddled

When my daughter Ava was only a few days old, and we were still in the hospital, I decided that she must not like being swaddled because she would always wiggle out of it. Then, a few weeks later I realized that she just needed to be swaddled more securely, and thus I was able to start getting some sleep again. If it wasn't for her swaddler she wouldn't have been sleeping much for the last 6 months. But now she is too strong for the swaddler, so instead of it being a useful tool it has become a dangerous threat.

If your baby is getting too strong for their swaddler and you go into their room in the middle of the night to find that they have wiggled it up over their face somehow, then it is time to teach them to sleep without it. Now, as simple as that sounds, it is a whole different story when it comes to actually getting them to sleep unswaddled.

Their little hands can keep them awake for hours. They pull their pacifier out, rub their eyes, and slurp loudly on their fingers. So, how can you get them to sleep without a swaddler when they are so used to sleeping with their arms pinned to their sides? The best way to transition your baby to sleeping unswaddled is to make it a very gradual transition.

The first night of transition should be to elinimate any other props that your baby sleeps with in combination with their swaddler, that are a direct aid to the swaddler. For example, Ava slept in a Boppy pillow in her swaddler because it helped her stay swaddled longer, so the first night we transitioned her we got rid of the Boppy pillow so that she could get used to sleeping flat on her back.

Once your baby has adjusted to this change, it is time to start loosening the swaddle. By the time we were ready to start transitioning our little girl, we had to tie a spare receiving blanket around the outside of the swaddler to keep her swaddled, so that was the first step of loosening her swaddle--removing the reinforcement.

Now, the swaddler we use just has a foot pouch and velcro flaps, if you use something more secure like a Miracle Blanket, then your first step to loosening might be to quit using the build in arm flaps.

Once your baby adjusts to each new step, then move on to the next step. The idea is to keep them making progress by not allowing them to get too comfortable with any one stage in the transition.

Ava is currently only very loosely wrapped in her swaddler to initially get her to sleep, she easily removes her arms once she is asleep and then sleeps unswaddled throughout the rest of the night. When we do do that initial swaddle, we only swaddle the bottom half of her arms so that she doesn't pull it up over her face in her attempt to bust out.

If you have a hard time making the transition, you might also find it helpful to use the last bottle of the night to get your baby to sleep and to put several pacifiers in your baby's crib so that there is always one at arms reach for them to get their hands on. Even if they don't know how to put a pacifier in their mouth when you start this process, chances are the process will encourage them to pick up this skill, if they are in fact old enough.

If your first attempts at a transition don't take, then be patient and keep trying every few weeks. Babies usually have a subtle way of letting you know what they are and are not ready for. Ava's father and myself were stressing about how we were going to get her to sleep unswaddled, and once we figured out how to transition her she in fact slept better unswaddled than swaddled. Her breaking out of her swaddler was her way of letting us know she was ready for something different.