“Should I swaddle my baby?” is a question I often get asked in my Bub Savvy Workshops. 

(Edited 2026)

It’s a great question, because like so many aspects of parenting, swaddling comes with a mix of opinions, advice, and very confident messaging, often pointing in completely opposite directions.

Here’s my starting point:

The way you care for your baby is entirely up to you. Parenting is full of conflicting advice, and learning to weigh up the pros and cons of any suggestion is an important skill. Information is useful, but it needs to be filtered through your own values, your baby’s needs, and your family context.

This blog isn’t here to tell you what to do. It’s here to help you understand the trade-offs of swaddling so you can decide whether, and how,it fits for you.

What Is Swaddling?

Swaddling is the practice of snugly wrapping a baby in a blanket or cloth to restrict their movement.

The theory behind swaddling is that it mimics the environment of the womb. However, like most parenting practices, swaddling comes with both potential benefits and potential downsides.

The Proposed Benefits of Swaddling

Swaddling is commonly promoted for several reasons:

Calming effect
Swaddling is said to help soothe babies and reduce crying.

Improved sleep
Many swaddled babies appear to sleep more soundly and for longer stretches, something that understandably appeals to exhausted parents.

Reduced risk of SIDS
Swaddling may reduce the chance of babies rolling onto their stomachs, a position associated with increased SIDS risk.

Easier feeding
Some parents find swaddling keeps babies more “contained” during feeds.

At first glance, that sounds fairly convincing. But when we look more closely, we start to see some important contradictions.

The Risks of Swaddling

Swaddling is also associated with several well-described risks:

Overheating
Swaddled babies are more prone to overheating, which is a known SIDS risk factor.

Reduced arousability
Swaddling dampens a baby’s ability to wake and respond , something that feels convenient for adults, but has important safety implications.

Promotion of deep (quiet) sleep
Swaddling shifts babies toward quieter, deeper sleep states. These are less protective than lighter, more active sleep.

Restricted movement
Limiting movement can affect motor development and reduce opportunities for babies to practise protective responses like head turning.

Hip dysplasia risk
Tight wrapping around the hips can interfere with healthy hip development.

Breathing restriction
A swaddle that’s too tight across the chest can restrict breathing.

Breastfeeding challenges
Swaddling can suppress feeding reflexes and interfere with early breastfeeding.

So…Does swaddling reduce or increase the risk of SIDS?

This is where the messaging becomes confusing, and where newer SIDS research is genuinely helpful.

Yes, swaddling may reduce the likelihood of a baby rolling onto their stomach. But it can also increase SIDS risk through other mechanisms, particularly by reducing arousal and movement.

And here’s an important point that often gets missed:

Most newborns placed on their backs cannot roll onto their fronts anyway.

So it’s worth asking whether swaddling itself is doing the protective work, or whether it’s simply acting as a cue for back-sleeping.

Swaddled babies are almost always placed on their backs. You wouldn’t put a swaddled baby on their side (it doesn’t work), and you certainly wouldn’t place a swaddled baby face down.

So could we use other cues to support back-sleeping without increasing risk through reduced arousal, movement, and heat retention?

What Recent SIDS Research Adds

A 2024 paper by Renz-Polster et al. offers a helpful new way of thinking about SIDS.

Rather than focusing only on lists of “risk factors,” the authors propose an evolutionary-developmental model, suggesting that SIDS occurs when:

The demands placed on a baby’s body exceed the baby’s current protective capacities.

In this model, safety isn’t just about avoiding risks, it’s also about how babies develop protective abilities over time.

Key insights from this research include:

• Protective skills are learned
Babies gradually develop airway protection, arousal, and movement responses through experience, not just age.

• Arousal is protective
Sleep with more movement and easier waking (like active/REM sleep) is safer than deep, quiet sleep, particularly during the peak SIDS vulnerability period of around 2–5 months.

• Movement matters
Head turning, lifting, wriggling, and repositioning are part of how babies practise keeping themselves safe.

• Risk is experience-dependent
The same care practice can carry different levels of risk depending on a baby’s developmental readiness and familiarity with that experience.

This research doesn’t suggest parents need to be perfect. It reminds us that babies are still learning how to keep themselves safe, and our care choices shape that learning.

Seen through this lens, swaddling isn’t simply “good” or “bad”, it’s a developmental trade-off.

Swaddling and Arousal: Why Deep Sleep Isn’t Always Better

Swaddling reliably reduces arousal and promotes deeper, quieter sleep.

While that might look like a win in the short term, reduced arousability is associated with increased SIDS risk. Frequent waking, movement, and lighter sleep states are biologically protective, even though they’re inconvenient for adults.

A 2022 systematic review concluded that swaddling may increase SIDS risk by creating conditions unfavourable to arousal, particularly for babies who are naïve to swaddling and during the under-6-month period when SIDS risk is highest (Dixley & Ball, 2022).

From a developmental perspective, sleep that looks “better” to adults isn’t always safer for babies.

What About Breastfeeding?

Another area of conflicting advice is whether swaddling makes breastfeeding easier or harder.

While a tightly wrapped baby may appear easier to “manage,” swaddling actually interferes with the natural breastfeeding process.

Babies are born with powerful feeding reflexes:
• head bobbing
• rooting
• hand-to-mouth movements
• pushing, kneading, and stabilising with their arms

Swaddling suppresses these reflexes and limits skin-to-skin contact, both of which are crucial for effective feeding and milk supply establishment.

A 2023 study found that babies swaddled immediately after birth showed:
• delayed initiation of breastfeeding
• less effective suckling
• reduced milk intake
• greater weight loss

Swaddling also visually obscures feeding cues and reduces crying, which can lead to missed feeds during a critical window for milk supply establishment (Dixley & Ball, 2023).

And honestly, a big part of this issue is that we’ve been teaching breastfeeding methods that work against babies’ reflexes and biology for decades. When parents understand how to work with a baby’s reflexes instead of trying to control them, swaddling becomes unnecessary for feeding.

How about this proposed benefit of the calming effect?

The theory is that swaddling can help calm babies and reduce crying by mimicking the feeling of being in the womb.

But does it?

Babies are certainly not restricted in their movement in the womb, as any pregnant woman will tell you.

In the womb, babies:

• Move freely, even in late pregnancy.
• Have a constant, optimal temperature.
• Experience the comforting sensations of noise, movement, and connection with their mum.

Swaddling cannot replicate these conditions.

The best “womb-like” environment is skin-to-skin contact, which has been shown to:

• Reduce crying.
• Help babies regulate their temperature, breathing, and heart rate.
• Promote calmness and connection.

 

 

This is where Dr. Nils Bergman’s research is so important to consider.

 

 

 

What About Sleep, and Parental Wellbeing??

 

Swaddling is often promoted as a way to help babies sleep more deeply and for longer periods, which may appeal to tired parents. However, biologically normal infant sleep involves:

• Frequent waking to meet their energy and growth needs.
• A higher proportion of REM sleep, which is critical for brain development.

 

Parental mental health matters. Sleep deprivation is hard.

But approaches that focus on “fixing” the baby, by restricting movement or suppressing waking, often create a mismatch between parental expectations and infant biology.

A more supportive approach is helping parents:
• understand normal infant sleep
• adjust expectations
• build coping strategies
• work with their baby’s rhythms

Biologically informed approaches, such as Possums Sleep, have shown that supporting parents to adapt to their baby’s needs improves both parental wellbeing and infant safety.

Helping parents adapt to their baby’s unique sleep needs improves mental well-being and infant safety. (Ball et al., 2020)

 

The Bottom Line: Should You Swaddle?

There’s no single right answer.

Swaddling can be calming in the short term, but it comes with trade-offs, particularly around arousal, movement, breastfeeding, and developmental learning.

When we zoom out, the question becomes less about whether swaddling is “right” or “wrong” and more about how it fits with your baby’s stage of development, need for movement, arousal, and connection.

If you’d like to learn more about biologically informed infant sleep, breastfeeding, and early parenting, you can find my workshops in Perth, WA, or explore my online Baby Sleep Masterclass 

 

References

Ball, H. L., Taylor, C. E., Thomas, V., Douglas, P. S., & the SBY working group. (2020). Development and evaluation of ‘Sleep, Baby & You’—An approach to supporting parental well-being and responsive infant caregiving. PLOS ONE, 15(8), e0237240. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0237240.

Bergman, Nils. (2014). The neuroscience of birth – and the case for Zero Separation.  37. 1. 10.4102/curationis. v37i2.1440.

Dixley, A., & Ball, H. L. (2022). The effect of swaddling on infant sleep and arousal: A systematic review and narrative synthesis. Frontiers in Pediatrics, 10, 180. doi: 10.3389/fped.2022.1000180

Dixley, A., & Ball, H. L. (2023). The impact of swaddling upon breastfeeding: A critical review. American Journal of Human Biology, e23878. doi: 10.1002/ajhb.23878.

Renz-Polster, H., Blair, P. S., Ball, H. L., Jenni, O. G., & De Bock, F. (2024).
Death from failed protection? An evolutionary-developmental theory of sudden infant death syndrome. Human Nature, 35, 153–196. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-024-09474-6

Rudzik, A. E. F., & Ball, H. L. (2021). Biologically normal sleep in the mother-infant dyad. American Journal of Human Biology, e23589. doi: 10.1002/ajhb.23589.

Zhang J, Wang M, Wei B, Shi J, Yu T. Research Progress in the Study of Startle Reflex to Disease States. Neuropsychiatr Dis Treat. 2022 Feb 24;18:427-435. doi: 10.2147/NDT.S351667. PMID: 35237036; PMCID: PMC8884703.