DS is 5.5 weeks old, and for the last week or so, I've been swaddling him in Halo sleep sack swaddles before putting him down for naps and night sleep. We had only swaddled intermittently before that because he seemed to really hate not having his hands by his face. We tried swaddles that let him have his hands closer to his face (the Love to Dream and Munchkin Angel), but they ended up driving him to distraction - his hands were so close that he wanted to suck on them but he's not quite coordinated enough to do so yet, so he would just get pissed. We almost gave it up, but since he sleeps so much better swaddled, we decided to just go all in and hope he would get used to it. Since then, his sleep has improved overall - he's doing longer stretches at night and some (though not all) of his naps have been better/longer.

He doesn't usually fight me when I'm putting the swaddle on, but once it's on, he'll fuss and cry and strain to pull his arms out while I'm rocking him. I can usually calm him down and then he'll be out within 5 or 10 minutes. The problem I'm having is that he seems to wake up during his nap, realize he's swaddled, and then get pissed instead of going back to sleep. I'll hear him start to stir from a nap, then I can hear him straining against the swaddle and pretty soon it escalates to full on crying. I know he's still tired because I can usually soothe him back down - which is fine if he's already been asleep for 30-45 mins or so - but the last two days it's like every 10 minutes it seems. I got so frustrated yesterday that I let him sleep unswaddled when he passed out after a bottle, but he startled himself awake within 15 minutes and then couldn't be soothed!

Did anyone else have this experience? Did your LO eventually get used to the swaddle? For what it's worth, he was a week late and was never a super sleepy newborn - I struggle to get him to sleep 14 hours a day which is supposed to be the minimum for this age. I'm also wondering if he's just entering the 6-week fussy period...or at least I'm hoping it's just a phase!