hi everyone we are the doctors bjorkman a physician couple going through pregnancy
and now parenthood for the very first time and we are sharing our medical expertise as well as our
in real life experiences along the way and after last week's video was all about
newborn sleep this week we're going to dive in specifically to some swaddle techniques
that will hopefully help your baby get to sleep and then stay asleep longer during
these what can be very challenging first few weeks of life definitely
if this is your first time meeting us i'm sarah and i am a board certified ob gyn
and i'm kurt and i'm a board certified pediatrician and we are the doctors bjorkman
welcome back everyone as we mentioned this week's episode is all about baby swaddles
and swaddle techniques before we get into any of that though we do just have to review safe sleep
for infants and so important things to know is that babies should be sleeping on their back in
an empty open crib with nothing else in the crib other than the clothes they're wearing and that
one swaddle blanket around them but what about swaddle and swaddle safety is there any concerns
yeah and so there's been some conversation about does swaddling put baby at an increased risk
for sudden infant death and so there was a great paper published in 2016 in the journal pediatrics
that was a meta-analysis looking at multiple studies of looking at the safety of swaddling
and found that importantly if baby was swaddled and they were on their bellies or on their side
this was a significant increased risk to these babies which again is why it's so important
that if you're going to swaddle baby that they're sleeping on their back yes additionally you want
to remember that you want baby's hips to be loose in that swaddle so you kind of want upper body
tight but you want their legs to be able to kind of bend up and out to prevent hip dysplasia also
once your baby shows any signs of wanting to roll over it is time to wean them out of the
swaddle and so that can be anywhere between two and four months of age and so these are
things for important safe swaddling yep and so with that that brings us to this week's episode
where we're going to cover four classic swaddles and some techniques you can use for those to
hopefully help your baby get to sleep and stay to sleep longer we're going to start out with
the classic hospital receiving blanket which is a great thing to know for those first few days
of life yes we also are going to go over using the ollie swaddle which is our personal favorite
and then also looking at the swaddle me swaddle blanket and the halo sleep sack
i start out with classic hospital blanket swaddle technique so the first is called the baseball
diamond so what i like to do is lay this out with one corner and pull one corner in and up there
and that's where baby's head's gonna go that's home plate so baby's head at home plate okay
and then the key with any swaddle is that the baby's arms need to be straight down
you know you may say like oh baby likes to have them up higher they'll wiggle out i promise
so straight down and then i bring in first base all the way over and across and then
here's the key is tucking it in behind baby and that's going to kind of keep those little arms
tucked down in a nice safe and comfy position then i come up with second plate second base if
you can get baby's legs to bend a little bit you can otherwise if your baby's nice and long like
ours is here maybe you're not going to be able to get this if baby's small enough and you tuck
this second base up and over the shoulder it'll be that much more secure and then second base
comes or third base comes over and across back swaddling and then again tucking underneath baby
nice firm swaddle okay again baby is safe babies on their back arms are snug and in place
this is great for just holding baby rocking baby and even sleeping if this is all you have
so this is by far our favorite swaddle so far the always swaddle um if you go to try to buy
one of these right now they are not available i'm not on amazon not on the ollie website
um so if you can get you one yourself please get it we're actually borrowing this from a friend
uh it's one of our favorites you can see it was used this morning has been set up on it still
it's just velcro on a really nice piece of fabric okay the key for this so again laying it out flat
you can see there's a nice little ridge here where baby's head goes okay again so this is for
new baby we're going to sneak this down a little bit okay again the key for the swaddle is arms
and at the side just like we did with the other swaddles they're coming in nice and snug babies
love to be snug you're not going to swaddle them too tight this is nice and stretchy
okay coming across and getting that other one in and tucking it in underneath and then coming over
to match the velcro to velcro here and then down and finishing all the way down the baby's nice
and snug arms are safely at the side and then you finish the bottom there's a nice little ring here
and just bunch this together and this allows it to grow with your baby you can change this
length and change the width quite a bit baby snug firm secure but also safe you can see it's
not up too high i don't have to worry about it sliding up over the face i have to worry about
it coming down on the neck here either these are snugly right at the level of the shoulders
okay so this is another one of our favorite swaddles this is the swat on me swaddle
um you'll notice in the design so it's just a bag with velcro wings here they have designed a
little cutout for i think this is for car seats um i would not recommend using this just as a
pediatrician these have not been tested safety tested for babies um safety in a car accident
and so they're part of the design i would just not trust having a baby swaddled in a car seat
but again so what this is it's a nice little bag so we're going to lay this out in the crib
and we're going to get baby i like to fold down this
thumb flap and then you can see there's a nice little pouch where baby's legs go into
you've got cecilia's helping us out today so baby's legs go in and then you're going to
bring this up onto the chest and then again arms nice and straight down at the side
wing comes across and over nice and snug don't worry about being too tight one thing i like
is to make sure there's tension on the bottom to make sure that the hand is secured down by the hip
and the other hand is nice and secure and then again the secret here is tucking in nice and snug
behind you can see her little hand is wiggling out that's okay we're going to catch it with the other
wing and keeping those arms nice and secure down at the side and then secured with velcro
okay again there's nice lots of space up here it's not going to get in around her neck it's
not going to cover her face if i want to i can still fit my hand under here but i went and
i made it nice and snug okay you may notice that sometimes the baby is going to wiggle
at first you may say my baby doesn't like to be swaddled they don't like their hands in
i will tell you what you're going to gain by doing this is they're not going to wake up
as much in the night because they're not going to startle themselves and so you want your hands down
this is the halo dream sack a super popular swaddle um we use this in the children's hospital
all the time cease is excited to get is swaddled in it you can hear um we personally haven't loved
this swaddle a whole lot but maybe that's more us than our baby but i'll show you how this works
so the design of this is a zippered bag with two velcro wings okay so bag opens up and baby hi baby
snugs in okay so it's a sleep sack okay if you want the arms can come out through
the holes on top it's how it's designed or you can leave them inside hi cuties
arms out through the holes and then it's just a sleep sack it's how it starts out
hi cutie okay so we've got our baby in the sleep sack so again just like with the other swaddles
the key is arms down at the side coming over we're gonna catch the forearm and
then tuck this in behind nice and snug arms at the side and then the velcro
keeps it snug okay she's getting tired and ready for a nap
hi cutie so again just getting settled in it's almost nap time for us here
and i'm gonna sing off camera to get her to be happy for that now
all right so that is a wrap pun intended for this week hope you enjoyed learning some of
these different swaddle techniques or ideas for you if swaddling is something that you want to try
um to help your baby sleep a little better at night hope you all have subscribed to our
channel and stay tuned next week we have lots more ob topics coming we have more
new parent stuff coming baby things so that's it we'll see you next week bye guys
we're doctors but not your doctors anything we've said in this video
is for education or entertainment purposes only it is not medical advice
any specific medical questions you have should be directed to your provider