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My LO had a very strong "startle" reflex that kept waking him up, so swaddling up until 4 months was a must for us. He was a strong little thing too, so I wound up using the Summer Infant wrap with velcro. When he started to roll, I swaddled him in his A&A wrap, so that if he got free, I didn't have to worry about him smothering himself or anything.

DS1 - We swaddled him with his arms out. It never occurred to me until the pediatrician suggested it. I told her he fought the swaddle so much. She said just do it with his arms out. Duh! He slept like that until about 3 months when we switched to sleep sacks.

DS2 - I never swaddled him at all. Just went straight to sleep sacks. His startle reflex was minimal. It didn't affect him at all. He is my better sleeper.

We did not, LO hated to have her arms down, I used a sleep sack for a few months, but she ran so warm that I stopped using it because I thought she was getting too hot. She slept through the night from about 6 weeks on, so I'm hoping we can skip swaddling with my next one too

LO hated the swaddle because she liked sleeping with her arms up. I thought, "Every baby must love it and if they don't, you're not swaddling them tight enough! That's what all the books say!" But in my gut, I felt it wasn't right for her. DH finally convinced me to let her go without (around week 2/3) and trust my instincts, and we were all happier for it.

@edelweiss: He probably fought it for less than a minute - but, of course, it feels like an eternity in the moment! If you're not against nursing before bed/naps, we often swaddled, then I nursed him, then readjusted the swaddle/rocked a little before putting him down. I think he began to associate swaddling with feeding, so he fought it less and less. (And a lot of times, the fighting the swaddle was actually just resisting being put down for a nap or bed, which would happen regardless of whether we swaddled him!) Our DS is a very classic tension releaser, though, so we knew once we got him through that initial "fight" he'd be soothed and happy. Even now that we aren't really swaddling anymore, we noticed that a really tight hug/squeeze will calm him down/soothe him while he does his tension release thing.

I also thought I *had* to swaddle, but my poor LO HATED having her arms tied down. I had tried just blanket swaddling and the SwaddleMe and gave up and just let her squirm around. That didn't last long. Then we went to the halo swaddle sack and just left her arms out, that helped a lot but her startle reflex was (and is!) so strong that she would wake herself up a lot. So then what we did for about 2 months was put her in the halo swaddle unvelcroed when we were getting her down, and then once asleep swaddle up her arms. Then she didn't wake herself up as much. She always got her arms out before the morning and I usually didn't reswaddle unless she was super flaily. We just got her a Zipadeezip because she was busting the velcro on the swaddle super fast and then scratching her poor face too much with her flailing, and so far it's been working really well! She loves that she can sleep with her arms out, and I love that she can't scratch herself and her flailing is a bit dampened and even though she still startles it either doesn't wake her up or not enough that she usually can't settle back down.

We did use a swaddle because we could see a clear difference between swaddled sleep and non-swaddled. If he wasn't swaddled he'd always startle himself awake. He did somewhat fight it at first, but we'd bounce him and shush him (by we, I mean DH, lol) and he'd settle down. We actually swaddled until he was about 6m old. He started being able to get his hands out of the swaddle no matter how tight it was or which ones we tried, so we ditched it and no transition issues.

We did. We used a halo swaddle sack, and when she started busting out of that we double swaddled with an a&a blanket first and then a swaddle sack over that. It definitely helped her sleep because she basically didn't nap hardly ever until I realized I should try swaddling her for naps (we'd always swaddled for night and she was a great sleeper so not sure why it took me a month to try it for naps!). Once we unswaddled the transition was rough because she couldn't keep her hands off her face/rubbing her eyes, but a merlin suit helped.