How to Swaddle Your Baby

Many newborns only sleep well when swaddled, but swaddling is harder than it looks when you have a wiggly newborn. Watch my step by step demonstration on how to swaddle your baby in a blanket with her arms in.

Transcript:

Hi, I'm going to show you how you can swaddle your baby with her arms out. Swaddling your baby with your arms out is a great thing to do to transition to her from when she's being swaddled with her arms in to later on when you won't be swaddling her at all. So it's a nice way to make sure she's still feels nice and cozy and snug and yet she has the ability to find her thumb or her fingers which is going to allow her soothe herself and to sleep for longer stints at night. So it's a nice thing to start thinking about doing when she's about 2-3 months of age and she's breaking out of the initial swaddle that you will do with her arms in.

Okay, so in order to swaddle your baby with her arms out, take a rectangular burp cloth such as this one that I have laid down here. And I actually prefer the burp clothes from the hospital. And make a nice, generous corner in your burp cloth so I would go at least half way down. Make a nice generous corner and then you're going to kind of follow the same technique that you follow when you swaddle your baby with her arms. But this time, you're going to actually put her so that her shoulders are above the fold of the cloth, like that. Okay, then you're quickly going to wrap around like this. You can see this one's a little tired. And you're going to wrap around the other side. And look at that, she's found her thumb, she's nice and secure and snug and she's ready to go to sleep.