The Love to Dream Swaddle UP Story: Our Newborn Nights

The first night home from the hospital, I swaddled Milo in a blanket the nurse had shown me how to fold. It took four tries. He was out of it in twenty minutes. I refolded it at 2 a.m. and again at 4, and by morning there was a pile of blankets on the chair and a baby who was wide awake and furious about being wrapped.

The Love to Dream Swaddle UP was already in the house by then. It came in a January order I placed three weeks before my due date, one long order with the monitor, the sound machine and the blackout blind, all of it bought at once from my phone in the recliner because I could not get comfortable enough to sleep. Two of them, size Small, because the one piece of advice I heard from every direction was to buy two of anything that touches a baby at night.

Size Small is rated for 8 to 13 pounds and up to 25 inches. Milo was born at 7 pounds 6 ounces on February 10, so the two sacks sat on the dresser for two weeks before he grew into the weight. He crossed 8 pounds at about two weeks old and started wearing one in late February. I remember feeling oddly nervous about the weight chart, as if there were a test I could fail at three in the morning.

What I noticed first was the hands. The arms-up design keeps them up by his face instead of pinned to his sides, and he found his mouth with a fist inside a minute. I am not going to tell you that is why he slept. I do not know why he slept, and neither does anyone else, whatever the listing copy says. What I can tell you is that he stopped fighting the wrap, and that cut the getting-him-down part of the night in half.

The two-way zipper is the detail I did not expect to care about. At three in the morning it means you unzip from the bottom, do the change, and zip it back up without pulling his arms out of anything. I used it maybe forty times between late February and mid May and it never once woke him more than he already was.

Eleven weeks, two identical sacks, and a two-way zipper I could work in the dark. That was the stretch where bedtime stopped being a wrestling match.

Here is the part I wanted to know before I bought it. Sizing runs on weight, so this is not a set-and-forget purchase. You check the chart, you check it again, and if your baby is long you will notice the shoulders getting snug before the scale says anything. By early May Milo was close to the top of the height range and it showed.

Second, the zipper needs care at the chin. You have to run it all the way to the top and tuck the tab, and half asleep it is possible to leave a fold of fabric up near the neck. I did that once, felt terrible about it, and after that I checked it twice every time, which is not a bad habit to build anyway.

Third, 1.0 TOG is rated for rooms between 68 and 75 degrees, and our upstairs runs warmer than that in a July heat wave. We never had to find out, because he was out of it by then, but in the last warm weeks of spring I put him in it over a diaper only and he still felt warm at the back of the neck when I checked.

Fourth, and this is the one that stings, you get about three months out of it. Eleven weeks in our case, from late February to mid May. It is a purchase for one season of a baby's life, and then it goes in the bin with the outgrown clothes.

In mid May, at about 13 weeks, Milo started doing the thing where he tipped his hip to one side. He was not rolling all the way over, just the first version of it, and that week the swaddle stopped. Dr. Bell had already told me in a general way that swaddling ends at the first sign of rolling, and I did not need a second opinion. Always on his back, on a firm flat mattress, nothing loose in the crib. None of that changed when the swaddle left. I put both Love to Dream sacks in a bin in the basement and he went into a plain sleeveless cotton sleep sack after that. We have not gone back.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

The short version is that I would buy it again for a baby due in the winter or early spring, and I would not expect more than one season from it. Get two. Move up a size the moment the weight chart says to, not when the shoulders start to look tight, because the fit is the whole point and a loose sack is just a sack.

The other thing I would tell you is that no sleep sack, no monitor and no sound machine made Milo sleep through the night. He is nine months old now and he still wakes some nights. What the Love to Dream Swaddle UP did was take one fight out of a night that had plenty of them, and that was worth it to me. If you are looking for a guarantee, there is not one. Talk to your pediatrician about your own baby, and follow the safe sleep guidance, which is back, firm and flat, with nothing loose in the crib.