Nowadays, a common opinion among young mothers is that diapers are no longer needed to care for the baby. Their sales in stores are falling daily, and pediatricians advise children to put on their sliders from the first days, because they do not hamper the baby’s movements and do not prevent him from developing correctly. As for the special groups for preparing for childbirth, in which they focus on the fact that the child develops early, they advise to generally avoid clothes of any kind. They argue that this is necessary so that nothing prevents him from hardening and developing correctly.
In order to understand whether you need to swaddle a baby, you need to go back a few months ago, when he is still in his mother’s stomach.
The very first sensation that the baby receives is touch. When the gestational age is 4-5 months, the fetus moves in the amniotic fluid without touching the walls of the uterus. However, over time, when he grows, the uterus naturally becomes small for him, and he constantly collides with its walls.
From about the eighth month of pregnancy, the already large fetus becomes quite cramped in the space inside the uterus and, in fact, it is clothed in its tissue. The sensations of touch give the baby an understanding of what kind of body it has, which is the same as the shape of the uterus, that is, the egg shape.
If the mother advocates “for” swaddling the newborn, the baby will most likely feel something similar, and, like any person who has already grown up, in the situation described above, should gradually come to terms with the changes that have occurred.
In order for this world not to become something terrible for the baby, it is required to help him return what was so familiar to him recently, that is, awareness of his body, its shape.
A conveniently swaddled baby calms down immediately, feels comfortable and safe. Now you know that this is by no means a coincidence, because being in the fetal position, he is the least susceptible to stress especially harmful at this age. Previous generations of women were well versed in such matters, because swaddling a newborn was a familiar thing for them. It was they who began to use diapers in order for the baby to better adapt to the new world.
Of course, many, many years have passed since then, but the way children were born remains the same as hundreds of years ago. Therefore, swaddling the newborn has not lost its relevance. Fears about the fact that the child will develop differently have no reason here. After all, infants at first, immediately fall asleep, it is worth swaddling them, feeling themselves in the usual environment. A week later, the children begin to try to pull their hands out of the diapers to suck them. This is a new development step, which is happening in the new world because, being inside the womb, the baby sucks its fist at about the age of four months.
That is why one does not need to try to understand attempts to release a child from a diaper as an escape. When children turn 2-3 weeks old, they begin to look differently at the things around them. Your child will begin to pay attention to the people around him, objects and colors. Then this will be the real first sign of liberation from the diapers, which the wise and attentive mother will understand and stop completely swaddling the baby.
For some, swaddling of the newborn and already infants is normal. Some babies are in diapers and sleep in them for up to two months. Sometimes this can be explained by difficult childbirth, when for the child this was a big shock, and understanding of the new world slows down a bit. In this situation, time will be the best cure for this problem. After some period of time, the baby will get used to it, will behave as it should be for newborn children. If you try to accelerate events, then this will not lead to anything good.
Therefore, if you swaddle your children until the moment when they themselves do not wish to get out of the diapers, nothing terrible will happen, on the contrary. The baby will gradually get used to the differences between this and the other world, where he spent his first 9 months, and will not be nervous.
In any case, swaddling newborns is a moot point, and it’s up to you to decide whether or not to swaddle your baby.