Our son is four months old and we’ve tried at least five different sleep sack/swaddles. What worked for him in the first month wasn’t what worked for him in the second month, and so on. My biggest takeaway is: don’t buy a ton of one kind and don’t be afraid to try several different ones. As a reminder, this page includes affiliate links. I may receive compensation if you make purchases from this page but I will never recommend products that I don’t absolutely love.
- To start things off strong, the tried and true swaddle using a swaddle blanket. This is what they do in the hospital, what nurses will teach you how to do, and it turns your newborn into the most adorable burrito that ever lived. If your newborn has any Houdini skills, you might also find yourself double-swaddling with two swaddle blankets. Our son was in a swaddle blanket more than he wasn’t during his first month. It kept him calm and avoided the startle reflex. My husband took as many swaddle blankets as the hospital would allow and we got several as gifts so we didn’t end up purchasing any ourselves. My tip with these: however tight you think you make it, your baby probably likes it tighter.
- After our son started breaking out of a double swaddle blanket, we knew we needed to upgrade to something else. The Velcro SwaddleMe swaddles worked wonders and quickly became our go-to. Then, at around two months, the SwaddleMe swaddles got too small and a friend gifted us a 3-pack of aden + anais swaddles. These worked just like the SwaddleMe brand but were slightly bigger. They lasted us through another month!
- We started noticing that our son LOVES to have his hands close to his face. This is definitely his way of self-soothing but it goes against the whole point of the swaddle blankets or the Velcro swaddles that kept his hands close to his sides. I decided to try a different kind of swaddle — the Love to Dream swaddle allows your little one to keep their hands up and still reduce their startle reflex. This was a total game changer! I’m pretty confident when we switched to this swaddle is also when we started getting longer stretches of sleep at night. At four months, we still use this swaddle (we’re at a size medium now).
- Another favorite option of ours is a transitional sleep product. The Merlin Magic Sleepsuit turns your baby into a michelin man/marshmallow — it keeps them cozy while encouraging them to stay on their back. The biggest downside we’ve found is that it’s a little harder to get them into and a lot harder to do middle-of-the-night diaper changes.
- We purchased Quince’s sleep sack in anticipation of our son sleeping in his crib and needing something safe when he inevitably rolls over. These are VERY similar (if not identical) to the Kyte sleep sacks but they are $20 cheaper. We started using these for crib naps and the bamboo material is dreamy! My only complaint is that when I use it with the SNOO, the velcro from the SNOO strap created a good amount of pilling on the sleep sack.
Another thing to note, we absolutely love our SNOO but we didn’t find that the accompanying SNOO Sacks to be as great as the bassinet. The bassinet only works if the sleep sack wings are attached so we most often used one of the sleep sacks from the above list and only use the chest Velcro of the SNOO sack. I felt comfortable doing this after reading a lot of other parents on Reddit doing the same but please do your own research.
