Wants to be swaddled AND sleep on stomach

One of the girls still loves to be fully swaddled...but the past few days I have found her asleep on her stomach...while fully bundled up. She has never cried for me that she can't get back over. I don't think she wants to. Is this a dangerous position at this age? I left one arm out of her swaddle tonight and she's in there not able to fall asleep. I'm about to go back in there and wrap her all up again.

 

when ours started to roll over in their swaddles, I did worry about that... so that's when we started to quit swaddling. I worried about them either suffocating, or breathing in their own carbon dioxide... not sure if my worries are warranted or not.

when we started to unswaddle them that was a whole other issue... it did take a while for ours to sleep unassisted w/swaddles. good luck.

 

My DS would only sleep if swaddled and on his belly, so we did that from the get go. Even swaddled he could easily lift up his head and upper body and scoot around the bed. I know back to sleep is the official word but I did what I had to for everyone's sanity.

Good luck!

 

Could you try just swaddling the lower half of their body? Perhaps that would make them still feel snug and secure without completely binding their arms. I usually do a lower swaddle on our boys because they love to sleep on their tummy. I tend to save the full blown swaddle for when they are fussy.

 

That's when we started swaddling DD arms out. She seemed fine with it.

 

I don't know if it's dangerous, but I would think it would be safer if her arms were not swaddled. ardon: But, I didn't swaddle my kids, so I don't have any actual experience, I just think I would be more comfortable knowing they could use their arms to help reposition themselves if they needed to.

 

i think it would be very dangerous, however, as one poster said, sometimes it is done for everyones sanity. Mine would not sleep out of the swaddles at all-arms flailing etc...Well my boy has mastered better control of his arms and the past week, we have just started swaddling him from chest down. Before we went to chest down, we swaddled one arm out for a week(the one he likes to put in his mouth so he didnt fight swaddle as much. We have just started doing the one arm with our daughter and it is working well-but with two arms forget it-no one will ever sleep! When she gets more control of reflexes/nerves we will put second arm out. I highly recommend not swaddling fully or for much longer. The whole reason we are transitioning is because of a couple of scares with them starting to get ready to roll over and blankets over faces. GL!

 

That's about when we stopped the swaddles too, and switched to sleep sacks. It seemed to keep them more content still being wrapped in the sack. It took a few nights for them to get used to though! :hug:

 

This is a toughie because I know how terrifying it is to do anything that might make your babies sleep worse -- but I think if a baby is able to roll around, it's time to stop swaddling. Probably nothing bad would happen, but it's just not worth the risk IMO.

Also, stopped swaddling is usually not as bad as parents expect. From what I've heard (and in our case) there is a night or two of the babies having trouble falling asleep, and they might wake up a little more often during the night, but then it's totally fine. I didn't bother with arm-out swaddling or trying to do it gradually, we just did cold turkey. I figured one big transition was better than a lot of little ones.