I don’t think that I picked up on this with the first kid, but I wish somebody had clued me in on the fact that a good, successful swaddle is really a solid 40-45% of the key to a happy baby.

I’m still not very good at swaddling, to the point where my wife actually bought these pseudo-swaddles for me to use that have velcro and do most of the work for you, whereas she takes the plain old, regular blankets and wraps the kid up tight as a little mummy with little regard for whether he’s actually breathing or whether she’s doing it too tight like I’m constantly paranoid about when I’m trying to do it myself!

And yet that kid will sleep for days when she’s got him good and swaddled – there have literally been days when I forget that we’ve even got a new baby at home because I’ll walk by and casually observe him just laying there sleeping in the swing or the bassinet, wrapped up like we live in the arctic, not a single peep to be heard out of him.

Maybe that’s the trick – you wrap them tight enough that their diaphragm literally cannot expand in order to make any noise, so their only option is to simply lay there comatose until somebody unwraps them and brings them back to life … kind of like a frozen head!

Well, maybe not exactly like a frozen head, but I think you get what I was trying to say here… 😛

New fathers – learn how to swaddle! Practice on produce or the dog or something, or at least have your wife buy you the fake ones if she doesn’t want you to pass the kid off to her every time your little burrito needs to get bundled up! You’ll thank me later … ideally when the baby is sleeping. 😉