Why stop swaddling?

LovingStepMom

I have read so many posts of moms who try to stop swaddling their babies around 4 months.  What is the reason for this?

I am wondering since we swaddle DS and want to make sure I'm not doing anything that is inevitably bad for him in the long run.

TIA!

Heifergal

We waited too long and found E face down in the mattress still in her swaddle sack where she had rolled over. Scared us to death. We stopped swaddling that night.

LucyGoosey81

If they can roll back to belly, many people stop.  I swaddled until 6.5 months with DS1 and won't stop with this guy any time soon, either.

aubreyalise

the only reason i stopped was because one night he rolled over in his woombie onto his tummy, threw up, and then just laid there unable to do anything.

if he couldn't roll over he'd absolutely still be in his woombie! 

thatgrrrrl

M managed to get her legs out of her swaddle me while it was still velcro-ed at the arms. She tried to strangle herself. We stopped swaddling in the middle of the night that night.

starsmaycollide

We did it as he got more and more mobile, and was crying after coming out of it at night. It made sense to just get him to sleep without so he would not wake himself up. Also, I was worried he would roll over in it. We use sleepsacks now.

There is nothing wrong with swaddling. My only concern would be that the longer it's done, the more the more aware child might miss it and have trouble transitioning. But I am sure that just depends on the kid, though. 

wannja01

Because I can't cram his chunky butt into a miracle blanket anymore. He seemed ready and now he won't go back to it. FWIW pedi said do it as long as he wants since he spent plenty of time out of it when we were swaddling.

drea_raye

We still are swaddling, J isn't rolling back to tummy yet, but he has gone the other way and has great head control, so I am not too too worried about that issue. He does sometimes break out of the swaddle, and if we were using something other than A&A blankets I might worry about the suffocation factor.

He is still face punching himself too much to go to sleep (and stay that way) unswaddled. If he perfects self-soothing with his thumb that may be our guideline (or we have a new game trying to teach him to put his paci in instead of taking it out...)

I still like it because there is no way this kid is falling asleep on his own yet, but the swaddle makes it much easier to get him down (and asleep last night and this last nap with very little intervention! Yay!)

ele617

We stopped simply because DS kept trying to get his hands out, wasn't able to, and thus was waking himself up in the process (2x/night). Now, he's only getting up once.