Love to Dream Swaddle UP vs a Traditional Swaddle

Short answer: for the newborn months I would buy the Love to Dream Swaddle UP again before I would fold another blanket at two in the morning. My son Milo was born on February 10, and by his second week I had tried both. One of them stayed in the rotation for eleven weeks. The other lasted a single night.

That is not a knock on the nurse who taught me the fold, and it is not a knock on the blanket itself. A traditional swaddle is a square of thin fabric you probably already own, it goes as thin as you want on a warm night, and it never stops fitting. But it is a skill, and at 2am with a baby who has just kicked his way out of it, skill is the thing you have least of. Here is the comparison, from a mother in Dayton who is not a sleep consultant and who is not going to tell you either one will make your baby sleep.

	Love to Dream Swaddle UP	Traditional Swaddle
What it is	One zip up sleep sack, sized Small for 8 to 13 lbs and up to 25 inches	A square of thin fabric you fold and tuck around the baby
Cost	You buy a size, then the next size when they outgrow it	A blanket you probably already own, or the one the hospital sent home
Getting it on at 2am	Lay the baby down, close the zip, done in seconds	Fold, tuck, tuck, tuck, and hope it holds
Staying put	The zip stayed closed for eleven weeks in our house	Ours came loose twice in one night at home
Arm position	Arms up, hands near the face	Arms down and pinned at the sides
Warm rooms	1.0 TOG, made for rooms between 68 and 75 degrees	As thin as you fold it, so you control the layers
Sizing	By weight, so the Small stops fitting around 13 lbs	No size at all, fits a newborn and keeps fitting
Under 8 lbs	Not yet. Small starts at 8 lbs	Works from the first night home
Night changes	Two way zipper opens the bottom without unwrapping the top	The whole wrap comes apart and has to be rebuilt
Laundry	Machine wash, and two in rotation kept one clean	Machine wash, and it dries faster than anything with a zip
Life span	Roughly 8 to 13 lbs of growing, which was eleven weeks for us	Useful until the first sign of rolling, same as any swaddle
Learning curve	None. The zip is the whole tutorial	A real skill, and it took me more than one night to learn

Where Love to Dream Swaddle UP Wins

The test that mattered was the one at 3am. Nate is up at 5:30 for work, so the night shift is mine, and the nursery is across the hall from our room with one east window and a crib against the inside wall. In the dark, with one hand, a zip is a zip. I could lay Milo down, find the pull, and close it without turning on a lamp. With the blanket I needed both hands, a flat surface, and enough light to see the corners. That sounds like a small thing written down. It is not a small thing at 3am.

One night in early March is the one I keep coming back to. It was well below freezing outside and the nursery was sitting at 71 degrees, which is inside the range the label gives. Milo woke at 4am, and I changed him on the dresser seven feet from the crib with the lamp off, working by the light from the hallway. I had him back in the sack and back down in under four minutes. I timed it the next night out of curiosity and it was about the same. With the blanket I would have needed the overhead light, and the overhead light ends the night for everybody in this house.

The two way zipper did more than save time. It meant night changes happened without unwrapping him all the way. I could open the bottom, deal with the diaper, and close it again while he stayed warm from the chest up. With a blanket, a change meant the whole fold came apart and had to be rebuilt from scratch, and by then he was awake and I was awake and neither of us was going back down easily.

The sizing is by weight, and that matters more than it sounds. Small is built for 8 to 13 pounds and up to 25 inches. Milo was 7 pounds 6 ounces at birth, so it did not fit him at first, which is the one place the blanket beat it in our house. Once he crossed 8 pounds at about two weeks, the Small was right until he was 13 weeks old. The fabric is 93 percent cotton and 7 percent elastane, so it gives when you pull it over a diaper, and it went through the machine wash with everything else.

The arms up design is the part people ask me about. His hands sit up near his face instead of being pinned to his sides, and that is where Milo wanted them from the first week. I am not going to tell you it made him sleep longer, because I do not know that and neither does anyone else. I can tell you he fought the blanket the one night we used it, and he did not fight this.

Where a Traditional Swaddle Wins

Here is what the blanket does better, and I will not pretend otherwise. You probably already own one, it has no size, and it never stops fitting. There is no Small to outgrow and no next size to order in a hurry. When a baby is brand new and you are still learning what you are doing, a large square of thin fabric is a forgiving thing to have in the house, and it folds smaller than anything with a zip in it.

Temperature is the other real advantage. A blanket is as many layers as you fold, so on a warm night in May, when the nursery held heat worse than the rest of the house, I could go thinner. The Love to Dream Swaddle UP is 1.0 TOG, which the listing puts at rooms between 68 and 75 degrees, and there is only so much you can do about a room that runs warm. You can layer underneath it. You cannot make it thinner.

The warmth question is not theoretical in an upstairs room. Our nursery has one east window and the sun hits that wall by seven in the morning, so a May afternoon nap could run warmer than the rest of the house. The label on the Love to Dream Swaddle UP puts it at 1.0 TOG for rooms between 68 and 75 degrees, and I checked our hall thermostat more often in those weeks than I have in my whole life. On the two hot nights we had, I put him in a short sleeve bodysuit underneath and left it at that. With the blanket I would have gone to one layer and slept easier.

And the newborn window. Small starts at 8 pounds. Milo was under that for his first two weeks, so the blanket was the only swaddle in the house that fit him. That is not a small gap if you are holding a seven pound baby and the zip sack is still too big. The other thing I will say plainly: some babies hate having their arms up. If yours does, you will find out in one night with a blanket you already have, and you will have saved yourself a purchase. That is a real reason to start there.

How the First Night Went

We came home from the hospital in February with a blanket and a demonstration. The nurse did the fold once, slowly, and it looked easy. At home that night I did it the same way, and by 2am it had come loose twice. The third time I rewrapped it and sat up watching him, and then I gave up on the blanket for the night.

What I should have done first is what I would tell anyone now: try the fold in daylight, on a flat surface, before you are tired. I tried it at 11pm instead, on the changing pad, with a baby who was already half asleep and a husband asleep down the hall because he is up at 5:30. The nurse made it look like one motion. It is four or five motions and they all have to be snug. Mine were not snug. When it came loose the second time I checked the corners and one had worked its way out from under him, which is exactly the thing you are not supposed to find at 2am.

The two Small Swaddle UPs were already washed and folded in the dresser drawer, because I had ordered them in January with the monitor, the sound machine and the blind, all in one order, three weeks before he was due. I had never used a swaddle of any kind before that winter. Nobody handed anything down to me. I was working from a listing and a nurse's fifteen second lesson.

The first night in the zip sack, he fussed for maybe a minute, put his hands up by his face, and went quiet. I want to be careful here, because I have read enough of these to know the promise being made. He did not sleep through the night. He was two weeks old. He woke to eat like every two week old does. What changed was that I was not rebuilding a blanket four times in the dark.

The blanket came loose twice before 2am on our first night home. The zip never came loose once in eleven weeks.

What Eleven Weeks Looked Like

He wore it for nights and naps from about two weeks old until mid May, when he was 13 weeks and started showing signs of rolling. That is the rule I would repeat to anyone: stop swaddling at the first sign of rolling. We stopped that week. He went into a plain sleeveless cotton sleep sack with no brand on it, nothing special, and the two Small Swaddle UPs went into the bin of things he had outgrown. It is not in use in our house now.

Eleven weeks is not a long time for a piece of gear. It is also exactly what that size is built to cover, and I would rather have something that fits properly for eleven weeks than something that fits loosely for six months. Weighing him at Dr. Bell's office was how I knew when to move up, and then how I knew when to stop. If you do not keep an eye on the weight, you will be squeezing a baby into a sack that is too small without noticing.

Laundry is the unglamorous part. Two Small Swaddle UPs was the right call, because between spit up and the diaper situation you are washing one of them most days. The laundry is in the basement in our house, so a clean one in the drawer upstairs meant I was not carrying a baby down two flights at midnight. They went through the machine with his bodysuits and came out the same shape. The only wear I saw in eleven weeks was at the zipper pull, and the care note about keeping the zip away from the chin is worth reading once before you use it in the dark.

The blanket, for the record, did not get a second chance in our house. It came home from the hospital, came loose once at 2am, and never went back into the crib or the bassinet. That is one night of data, and I am handing it to you as one night of data.

Who Should Buy Which

Buy the Love to Dream Swaddle UP if your baby is at or past 8 pounds, if you are doing night changes alone, and if you want the swaddle handled in one motion in the dark. It is also the one I would hand to a first time parent who has never folded a swaddle in their life, because there is nothing to learn. Buy a traditional swaddle, or start with one, if your baby is still under 8 pounds, if your nursery runs warm, if you want to find out in one night whether your baby even tolerates arms up, or if you are the sort of person who will watch a video twice and get genuinely good at the fold.

You can also do what we did, which is have both in the house for the first two weeks and let the baby decide. That is not indecision. That is two weeks of information, and the blanket is a thing you probably already have. Whichever you pick, the safe sleep rules do not change: on the back, on a firm flat surface, nothing loose in the crib, and stop swaddling at the first sign of rolling. Ask your pediatrician about anything you are unsure of, including how warm the room should be.