One of the biggest challenges that new parents face for the first year of their baby’s life is how to get their new baby to sleep. There are so many factors! Is your baby too hot? Too cold? Is he uncomfortable? Is she hungry? It is so, so difficult to understand what your baby wants and what their cues are when you cannot communicate with him or her. One thing that does make bedtime just a little bit easier is a great swaddle like the Woombie Grow With Me Air.
So what is so great about this swaddle? I have reviewed several swaddles now:
Comfy Cubs Swaddle Blanket
Love To Dream Swaddle Up
Bluemello Swaddle Blanket
And all of them have really great qualities, however, they are all different! It’s amazing how many different swaddle designs you can have. So here are my favorite features of the Woombie Grow With Me Air Baby Swaddle.
Grow With Me
In many of my previous reviews of products, I have talked at length about how I love baby gear that are “grow with me” products. It can be done well and done not as well, but the Woombie Grow With Me Air baby swaddle is a really innovative, great design.
This Woombie is made to last from newborn stage up to 18 months. How is this even possible that a newborn and a 18 month old baby can wear the same swaddle blanket? Seems unlikely, but it isn’t! Woombie’s RN BSA designer created a pattern where you can unzip different side and bottom panels to make it fit a growing baby. This is similar to how you can expand your luggage with a zipper. It is very simple to figure out and doesn’t require any weird finnangling. You just unzip and you’re done.
If you want to see how to swaddle your baby with Woombie, watch the video below:
This is a really innovative design because you won’t end up having to buy a million of the same swaddler in different sizes to accommodate your baby’s growing body. There is plenty of leg room and plenty of room around the arms to make it snug, safe, and roomy enough in all the right places to make it comfortable.
Sleep Sack
It is important to know that babies cannot be swaddled indefinitely. When a baby starts to roll over, even if they only do it during the day and have never attempted it at night, it is time to stop swaddling. At this point, your baby may roll over even unintentionally and get stuck. If they cannot turn their head to the side, this could mean that they suffocate.
So although the Woombie Grow With Me Air is meant to be used until your baby is up to 18 months, they should not be swaddled that long. Woombie came up with a design to zipper down the sides into arm holes that your baby can have their arms through. This way, your baby still has a sleeper blanket that they can use.
Why Use a Sleeper Blanket?
You might wonder why you would use a sleeper blanket instead of just a regular blanket at this point. Well, babies can strangle themselves, or get tied up in blankets, or suffocate into them when they are sleeping. So if you want to keep your baby warm and you don’t want to have to jack your heat up, then a sleeper sack is the safest way to do that.
Mesh Fabric
This particular Woombie Grow With Me Air baby swaddle has another nice feature that isn’t in every single Woombie. This one has the “air” feature, which makes the swaddle blanket just a bit more breathable.
It can be really difficult to know how to dress your baby underneath the swaddler to keep them at the optimal temperature and coziness. In fact, Love To Dream Swaddle Up has a handy little chart that gives you a bit of a hand to know how to dress your baby under a swaddler for every temperature range.
However, if you are worried about your baby, overheating, like I always was, then the mesh fabric on the Woombie Grow With Me Air should put you at ease.
How To Know If Your Baby Is At the Right Temperature
Even when you think you’re doing everything right, it’s always good to know for sure. I consulted What to Expect When You’re Expecting, and the experts say that “That said, keeping the temperature between 68 and 72 degrees F is a good range in the summer and winter. When the room is too hot, research has shown that it can increase your baby’s risk of SIDS; when it’s too cold, baby can easily become uncomfortably chilly and wake up unnecessarily.”
Of course, you want to avoid both of those problems. The best way to do that is to keep the room circulated with a light fan and to make sure your baby has the right amount of layers. Again, consult the chart that is on my post provided by the Love To Dream Swaddle Up.
Another easy way to tell if your baby is too warm or too cold is to feel their skin when you check on them. If their skin is very cold, then add another layer of clothing to them. If it’s too warm, then make sure to only dress them lightly underneath the swaddle.
Free hands
Another thing about this Woombie Grow With Me Air baby swaddle is that it allows your baby to have free arms within the sleep sack.
The Woombie has a slightly different design than the Love To Dream Swaddle Up though. In that one, that I reviewed here, your baby has to keep his or her hands up by the ears. According to Love to Dream Swaddle Up, 90% of babies like to sleep with their arms up by their face. This allows them to soothe themselves by sucking on their fists during the night. However, the only downside to this design is that they aren’t able to put their arms down because the waistline fits snugly to keep your baby feeling secure.
The Woombie Grow With Me Air on the other hand, will allow your baby to move their arms around so that they aren’t pinned to their sides like the Comfy Cubs Swaddler, but the arms will not be able to go by their heads. This might be something that will frustrate your baby, but many babies love to have the freedom of moving their arms around without the micro reflexes waking them up in the middle of the night.
Tight Neckline
This Woombie Grow With Me Air is similar to the Love to Dream Snuggle Up again because the neckline fits snugly like a baby sleeper onesie. This ensures that your baby will not wiggle out of the swaddler like it could in designs like the basic Comfy Cubs Swaddler. When your baby gets a bit bigger and can break out of swaddlers easier or wiggle out, this is a great feature that you will certainly appreciate.
Reversible Zipper
One thing that no swaddler or sleeper should ever be without is a reversible zipper. The Woombie Grow With Me Air uses lots of zippers in their design, so it’s no surprise to me that they have the reversible zipper on their swaddler.
If you are new to the parenting world, this might not be something that you have ever considered, but I know every parent who wakes in the middle of the night to check on their baby will agree, this is the absolute best design of the 21st century.
Babies will often relieve their bowels during a night feed, but it is nearly impossible to tell, especially if they passed gas recently and everything smells a bit like newborn feces. But who wants to wake their baby and start that process all over again? Not me. It is so important to not put your baby to bed with a dirty diaper because that is sure to lead to incredible diaper rash.
Enter the reversible zipper to save the day. You can quickly and quietly check your baby’s diaper without even waking them a bit and you just saved yourself another hour of sleep by not having to change them one more time before bed.
Fabric
It is always important to know what kind of fabric you are dealing with when you buy a baby product that your baby will wear. This Woombie, as explained earlier has a mesh panel on it that will keep air circulating on your baby and will avoid overheating. This is especially important during the summer months when it’s difficult to keep your baby cool.
Beyond the mesh panel, this fabric is a mix of cotton and spandex. The cotton will ensure breathability while the spandex gives the fabric more stretch.
Hips And Arms
Speaking of the fabric, the Woombie Grow With Me Air baby swaddle has made the perfect design so your baby is held securely but not so tight where it would be dangerous. The arms are loose so your baby can move around a bit. The trunk fits snugly to give your baby’s belly a secure fit, and to make sure there isn’t too much movement of the sack while your baby is sleeping.
The fabric holds the hips loosely underneath the trunk area and the legs have enough room to kick around. One of the possible causes of hip dysplasia is when you swaddle your baby too tight, so it is important that your baby’s swaddle holds their hips loosely, which they are in the Woombie swaddler.
Conclusion
Overall, the Woombie Grow With Me Air baby swaddle is a great option for babies. This company really has thought of everything. They provide a sleeper that will fit your baby throughout the entire time that it shouldn’t sleep with blankets. You only have to buy one, or a couple if you want back ups. It thoughtfully has the mesh fabric panel so your baby doesn’t overheat. And your baby isn’t tied down as much as he or she is in a basic swaddler. This is a great quality product that I would recommend to any parent.