I’m from the East Bay, and my family still lives up there. I was a little shocked to hear two day-care workers in the area were arrested for dangerous swaddling practices (i.e. too tight). (Both of the workers are pregnant and each have one other child. )
I’m not a huge fan of swaddling, but there are doctors (like Harvey Karp) who teach safe swaddling practices.
The women who swaddled these babies did so (it seems) to restrict their movements, not to recreate the feeling of safety in the mother’s womb. (Swaddling proponents give this as one of the reasons why you should swaddle your newborn.)
These babies were also not young infants, but seven to eleven months old. It also was reported the women placed blankets over the babies heads during nap time.
I have witnessed the kind of swaddling the women were accused of (the abusive kind) in poorly run orphanages around the world, and have heard of many more instances than I have personally witnessed. In my own experience, I feel it is due to lack of staffing as well as not understanding this crucial time in human development that leads to this kind of neglect.
If done safely, what do you think about swaddling?
