The Happiest Baby on the Block and The Happiest Toddler on the Block 2-Book Bundle pdfdrive com

Ironing Out the Wrinkles:
Fixing the Most Common Swaddling Mistakes
Swaddling is simple, but watch for these common mistakes:
• Wrapping too loosely
The key to wrapping is to keep it snug … snug … snug. Make
sure you snug the blanket, removing slack with every step of
the DUDU. Loose blankets can smother a baby.
Denise discovered the tightness of the wrap was the secret
ingredient for her six-week-old son. “Our running joke was we
swaddled Augie so tightly we were scared his eyes would pop
out! But swaddling helped him enormously, and tight was
exactly the way he needed it to be!”
• Swaddling a baby with bent arms
Even with tight swaddling, it’s easy for your crying baby to
wiggle her hands out if she was wrapped with her arms bent.
While it’s true that new babies are comforted by having their
bodies flexed into the fetal position, and preemies do best with
bent arms at least until they reach their due date, babies
swaddled with their arms down still have lots of flexion in their
legs, fingers, and neck to keep them happy.
Swaddling helped Ted and Shele’s two-month-old
daughter, Dylan, sleep through the night. To keep her arms
straight, Ted tucked Dylan’s hands under the waistband of her
tiny sweatpants before wrapping her. He said, “I have to do
this because every time she gets her arms bent, she pops them
out and gets even madder.”
• Letting the blanket touch your baby’s cheek
If your baby is hungry and the blanket touches her cheek, it

---

may fool her into thinking it’s your breast, accidentally setting
off the powerful rooting reflex and making her cry out of
confusion and frustration. To keep the blanket off the face,
make it look more like a V-neck sweater.
• Allowing the finished swaddle to pop back open
You never want your baby to be in bed with loose blankets
that may get wrapped around her face. So, always use a blanket
that is big enough to wrap all the way around and tuck it in
tightly to make sure it doesn’t pop open.