This is an older review but I had a friend who was looking for the info and I still swear by these. Out of all the baby products we ever used, these Swadde Up sleep sacks stand out as being something that was totally worth using.

Disclaimer: I received a Swaddle Up samples from Love to Dream years ago when my youngest was brand new. This specific post isn’t sponsored but the original post was. The thoughts and opinions below are my own.

You are looking at a magical sleeping combo. Felix is a great day sleeper these days thanks to (A) the thing he’s wearing and (B) the thing he’s sleeping on. This is a huge improvement over our first few days at home, which were pretty much days of him only sleeping if someone was holding him. This was not convenient since those days were divided only by nights where he wouldn’t sleep unless someone was holding him. That’s really only fun for the first 72 hours…

The first solution came in the form of the Snuggle Me Organic, a co-sleeping cushion that lets baby sleep in a little sling that draws the cushion sides in like baby is being held. We’d never used a co-sleeping cushion before because we’re big on crib sleeping to keep the bed parents-only, but I absolutely love this thing. It’s so convenient to move him around in the cushion without disturbing him and he settles so much faster in the cushion than he does when he’s flat on his back in the crib.

Note: if you’re co-sleeping you aren’t supposed to have it on top of blankets like we do but since I use it to hold him during the day when my arms need to be doing other things, I don’t worry about that.

The best part about the design is that it stops Felix from doing that annoying startle thing that newborns do where you lay them down peacefully and then they fling their arms out all of a sudden, wake themselves up, and glare at you accusingly. He can still move and stretch against the sides but he can’t fling his arms around so easily.

Also, it’s a fantastic photo prop for those floppy newborn photos. This is my all-time favorite photo of Felix so far:

Oh that face…

Even with the amazing Snuggle Me Organic, we were still having some sleep issues at night when baby was back in his crib. Part of the issue was the swaddler we started out with. For whatever reason, I got swaddle blankets, swaddlers, or swaddle-like-items from five different brands while I was still pregnant and we started with the brand we were most familiar with. That one was easier to use than swaddling by folding rectangular blankets (a midnight origami adventure neither of us ever mastered) but the swaddle used giant strips of velcro that got stuck everywhere and made loud baby-waking noises.

We struggled through with the velcro with Calvin, but Felix also managed to get his arms stuck in painful positions every time we used this swaddle. So we tried a second swaddle that was a new variation on a traditional swaddle blanket and then one that turned out to be hard to fasten AND not-so-machine-washable and then we went a night and didn’t swaddle at all which meant we just sat around while Felix screamed between feedings. Super fun.

I finally made it to a set of products that were gifted from Love to Dream. There a bunch of different sleep options for different ages and I loved all the cute patterns but when I looked through them during my pregnancy I thought they looked too thin to use during the winter so I hadn’t unboxed them. I decided it was time to give Stage 1 a shot, which meant pulling out the Swaddle Up.

Oh, it’s a magical product. A magical magical cotton zippered baby soothing sleep cocoon. I’m such a fan. So is Felix.

The temperature thing isn’t an issue at all since we put Felix in footie pajamas and you aren’t supposed to overheat baby too much anyway. I wasn’t sure that the zippered sack would create enough of a swaddle because he didn’t seem too contained, but they chill Felix right out and they have a HUGE plus going for them because of the arm placement. You put baby’s arms kind of up with the hands around the face, which seemed crazypants to me until I realized that’s how babies sleep naturally. Letting them have their hands up but still zipped in means that they’re swaddled and less likely to scratch their face off with those little fingernails but they can still self soothe by sticking their hands in their mouth.

Plus, isn’t he just so cute in it? Like a little stretched out baby starfish or something.

The magical combination is when you take a fussy baby that wants to be held while you’re trying to dress the older siblings and you leave him in his Swaddle Up and cushion him in his Snuggle Me Organic. The soothing is unreal.