Parents and professionals in certain parts of the United States and Australia are being given erroneous information about swaddling. Not only is the message confusing and disingenuous at best, it's potentially harmful at worst. These messages are being delivered via education and through mislabeled products. These misguided messages are being propagated, in some instances, for reputational gain and in others for profit and they absolutely fly in the face of ALL the research done - over decades - on the subject.
Examples:
The term "swaddling" is being exploited and illegitimately applied to various non-swaddling items in order to validate the use of clinical studies to promote those products for profit.
Parents are being advised that swaddling a baby with their hands at their sides, or inside the blanket, prevents on-going development and soothing, even though all studies done on swaddling have been performed with the arms and hands in this position and have still shown improved development.
Parents are being told that the AAP advises swaddling could be hazardous to newborns in the crib due to the risk of loose bedding. This is patently false: The AAP has advocated swaddling on many occasions and has, on several occasions, written about the benefits of swaddling. Additionally, we have never been able to find a single incident of injury of this kind linked to swaddling even though there are so many millions of parents swaddling around the world, every night.
We have in our possession, several (nearly all), well-known, scientific studies that clearly define swaddling as wrapping an infant snugly with arms to the side to make a newborn feel more secure and to limit the startle reflex thus preventing unwanted arousal. As you know, proper swaddling also allows infants to safely stay asleep on their back even when they otherwise prefer the risky stomach-sleeping position. Because of this, swaddling has become perhaps the single most effective tool available to new parents when it comes to providing safe sleep for infants and has even been shown to significantly reduce the risk of SIDS by as much as 30% according to an exhaustive study done in Australia.
Because of our own experience of swaddling nearly one million newborns with the Miracle Blanket (with a still-perfect safety record, in spite of the statistical likelihood of SIDS deaths with that many users) we are extremely concerned about parents being incorrectly educated regarding sleep positions that have not been clinically studied.
Nowhere is this trend more directly evident than in North Carolina. As part of the implementation of the "Infant Safe Sleep Campaign" the NC Healthy Start Foundation says the long held tradition of swaddling could lead to suffocation due to loose bedding. While loose bedding is a serious problem, it is altogether separate from swaddling safety and this theory linking it to swaddling lacks evidence, data and/or clinical studies. It goes directly against decades of research and empirical data from around the world.
Equally disturbing, in the U.S. and Australia, emerging products are being marketed as "swaddlers" when they are in fact lacking the very discernible scientifically-proven attributes that make swaddling safe and effective. While these products do serve a purpose by eliminating loose bedding, they are misleading parents who are missing out on the very real benefits of a true swaddle which include SIDS reduction, soothing of stress/colic/crying, elimination/reduction of startle reflex/waking, and lateral belly pressure.
Our intention here is three-fold. Not only do we feel an urgent need to bring this to your attention, we would be grateful for your feedback and thoughts. We are also assembling a coalition of professionals that understand and support legitimate swaddling as defined in all studies done on the subject. This will be part of a campaign we plan to roll out that will properly educate parents on how to swaddle. Please feel free to send your comments to me at Mike@MiracleBlanket.com.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing back from you!
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