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So our girl (5 months chronological, 3.5 months or so adjusted) has a pretty strong tic when she wants to go to sleep. Her arms and legs flail pretty wildly and seems to keep her up. Why does it seem so? If i do a "manual swaddle" and hold her arms, she slowly slowly calms to sleep. BTW: she doesn't seem to have Moro response any more.

It's warm now, so we use a muslin swaddle cloth. With the give and stretchy in this, she flails out of this pretty easily. She runs hot, so a flannel cloth is way too warm for her. We tried the Miracle Blanket, but with both strength and size she grew out of it. Same with the Nested Bean Zen Swaddle - she's strong enough to break out of the velcro in literally 10 seconds.

So, how do I help calm a flailing freakishly strong girl? or should we be looking at other calming aids?

Rich Homolka
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  • "Her arms and legs flail pretty wildly and seems to keep her up. Why does it seem so?" Because she doesn't actually want to go to sleep when you think she does? – Dennis Hackethal Aug 12 '23 at 15:51

2 Answers2

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Our girl somehow always managed to free herself of whatever swaddling method we came up with. We stopped fighting it after some time (earlier than 3 months for sure) and simply made sure she won't scratch herself. Socks on palms work well, but there are some dedicated anti-scratching-hand-thingies for children. She did have some trouble falling asleep, but eventually she learned that also.

You are slowly nearing a time when your baby's sleeping habits are made. If she always falls asleep on your arms, you're going to have a difficult time putting her to bed later on.

In case this is a medical question about the twitching, we don't handle those! If you're worried about that, go see a doctor.

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Dariusz
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  • is there any chance you could elaborate on the comment about nearing the time that sleep habits are formed? Perhaps as an answer to this question: http://parenting.stackexchange.com/q/20590/4092 – Jeffrey Blake Jun 06 '15 at 20:13
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I would try jiggling her shoulder while she's falling asleep. This is helpful for my son who has a high degree of muscle tone and sometimes has trouble winding down.

As you may have noticed, it can be helpful to get plenty of exercise and fresh air, and being overtired can make it harder to relax and fall asleep.

In case you're wondering what I mean by exercise for a baby of this age, please see my comment about this in the following thread: Infant has trouble falling asleep

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aparente001
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