infant care specialist

Liz Hilton, founder of Swaddelini, tells us about the unique process she uses to create her amazing swaddle and why her swaddle is different.  You can listen to this complete podcast episode on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Kristin:  Welcome to Ask the Doulas with Gold Coast Doulas.  I’m Kristin.

Alyssa:  And I am Alyssa.

Kristin:  And we’re here today with Liz Hilton, who happens to be a birth and postpartum client of ours.  She has an amazing product to talk about.  Tell us about your swaddles and where you came up with the idea and more about how we can put it into action!

Liz:  Well, first, thank you so much for having me on your talk.  My product in Swaddelini.  It’s inspired by my firstborn son, Thomas, who was a little Houdini.  Veritable little Houdini; got out of all his swaddles and would constantly wake up from the Moro reflex.  I’m really excited about my next baby that I’m going to be having a couple weeks here because now I’m equipped with a swaddle that is easy to use and protects against the Moro reflex and is completely kick-proof and escape-proof.

Kristin:  You’ll have your own baby model!

Liz:  I know!  I’ll have my own little cute baby model!  My Instagram Swaddelini is going to blow up with pictures of my new baby.  But yeah, what’s different about it is that typically swaddles involves a lot of wrapping or cumbersome closure systems like zippers, Velcro, or God forbid, snaps.  So mine just goes on and off like a sock, and I’ve incorporated some light compression therapy into the chest area to give the sensation of a hug all night long.  So I’ve actually trademarked that as Hug Technology.

Kristin:  Love it!

Liz:  And the individual tubes help keep the arms down for the Moro reflex.  It encourages that sleep safe position of being on the back and arms at the sides.  And then when you need to change the diaper, there’s an easy access diaper flap so you can change the diaper without having to take the swaddle on and off.

Kristin:  That’s such a pain to remove the swaddle and wake the baby!

Liz:  Yeah!  And it’s also adaptable, so with any baby product, you want it to adapt because all babies are different.  Every baby is different.  Every mom is different.  So some babies like their arms out.  Now, part of the thinking behind that is so they can self-soothe when they do wake up from the Moro reflex.  The idea with the Swaddelini is that that won’t happen as often because their arms are encouraged to be down.  But if your baby insists on having their arms out, you can just leave their arms out.  You’re still going to get that Hug Technology benefit.  Probably my favorite thing is that this swaddle is easy to put on, but also doesn’t restrict motion.  That’s one thing that doctors have been telling moms is, you know, don’t swaddle your baby.  It will cause hip dysplasia.  And that’s just because some swaddles, there’s no stopping point when you’re wrapping them or pulling the Velcro.  It’s very easy to do it too tight.  Whereas with this, it’s a four-way stretch knit.  It’s soft.  It’s stretchy.  And there’s no risk in that.  And even though the baby feels hugged all over, they have freedom of movement.  So if, for example, you’re breastfeeding, the baby can, while wearing the swaddle, can kneed your breast but can’t scratch.  Same when they’re sleeping; they can touch their face, but not scratch it.  So that’s another benefit.

Kristin:  And you have different sizes, so as they grow bigger, their swaddle size is based on how many pounds the baby is?

Liz:  I’ve done it that way.  I’ve said the small is good for 6-12 pounds and the large is 12-18 pounds.  The reason I did the larger one is just because there’s that transition where your baby’s kind of rolling over their side, and you’re, like oh, my God.  Is it going to happen?  Are they going to roll over?  Am I going to wake up and my baby’s on their front?  You have all these fears.  What I say is with the larger one — or even with the smaller one, if your baby is toying with rolling over sooner before they’re out of the smaller size, just take one arm and leave it out.  And then one they’re rolling over a lot during the day, you can take both arms out.  If your baby likes to sleep with their feet out, leave the feet out.  My niece slept in her large swaddle between month 8 and 11 until she was ready to get out.  She was smaller, though.  She was a smaller baby, so that’s why she went so long.  But she just didn’t want to leave it, but it was a nice transition.

Alyssa:  And they’re made out of different things.  I’m very curious what the process is and how you make them, too.  We talked a little bit about it on the phone, but I thought it was very cool how you make these.

Liz:  Yeah.  I have two very distinct designs.  The first one I did, I made out of just a bunch of synthetic fibers that I’ve used for compression garments that I’ve made for kids with, like, CP or lymphedema.  And so that helps with the light compression at the chest.  So that part is the same.  For the rest of it, it’s a moisture-wicking nylon-polyester blend.  It feels very lightweight, but it’s actually very cozy and very soft.  You can feel that.

Alyssa:  So soft!

Liz:  Yes!  But at the end of the day, it is a synthetic fiber, right?  I learned very quickly that some moms like natural fibers.  So after much research, I found a supplier of bamboo, and they make this bamboo in a mechanical process versus chemical.  You’ve seen a lot of maybe bamboo-rayon products.  This is not that.  This is just a natural bamboo made in a nonchemical process, and I pair it with a really exciting new fiber.  I’m actually the first in the industry to license this.  It’s called 37.5 because what it does is it regulates your body temperature to put it at a perfect 37.5 degrees Celsius.  So that is why the bamboo swaddles are a little cooler to the touch.

Alyssa:  So adult swaddles will be next.

Liz:  Actually, if you go on my website to the About section and watch my videos, I have my husband in an adult swaddle.  Yeah!  I just made one for a marketing thing, and then I told my husband, hey, will you get in this so I can do a video on YouTube?  And he was, like, you’re going to put it on YouTube?  No, I’m not doing this!  And I’m like, um, I had your baby.

Alyssa:  I’m asking this one thing!

Liz:  Yeah.  So there’s now a video of him in an adult swaddle!

Alyssa:  It sounds really cozy, actually.  I think I would wear one.  I love that it’s easy.  Can you explain putting it on and how it goes on?

Liz:  You basically just scrunch it up like a sock, and then you go in feet first and you get the Hug Technology over the butt area, and then you have it over the chest.  And then you go through the easy access diaper flap.  So stick your arm through that opening at the bottom, and then go through one of the arm tubes and then grab the hand.  Put that hand in yours, and just slide it down so that the arm is in the tube.  And so now their arm can move around, but it just encourages the arm to stay down at the side.  And then you just do that on the other side.  So these arm tubes are very, very stretchy, and their hands are absolutely free to move around.  And then the top naturally curls the opposite direction from their face.  But I also had this product tested at world-class third-party laboratories, where they do a suffocation hazard test.  They literally roll my product up in a ball, put it over a fake infant face, and they measure the CO2, and mine has passed every time.

Alyssa:  That was my question.  You know, you walk in, and it’s like this.

Liz:  That is absolutely fine, and if you wanted to do a suffocation hazard test on any product that you buy, what you do is roll it up and put it against your face and breathe.  With the design, though, it does naturally curl away from the face.  So if you put your baby to sleep like this, they wake up like this.

Alyssa:  And then demonstrate poopy diaper time when you don’t want to wake the baby.

Liz:  We’ve got this flap here, and again, it’s very, very stretchy.

Kristin:  As a doula, I love that.  It’s so easy.

Alyssa:  And do you recommend just like this doll has, like a onesie underneath this?  That’s all you need?

Liz:  Definitely.

Alyssa:  The right temperature?

Liz:  Even just a diaper and socks is fine.  I get that question a lot.  It’s really what you’re comfortable with, what your baby’s comfortable with.  If they’re really tiny and maybe they’re sliding, if their arms are so small they’re sliding out, you can put a onesie, like the sleeves on it, and that friction between the fabric will keep it on.  So then you get access to the diaper.  You do the diaper.  And then you can put it right back on, and you don’t have to take it off.  And then taking it off also is very easy because you just pull it down.  It’s actually easier with a real baby.  You can do it all in one motion.  I’ve gotten that a lot where moms say, oh, I didn’t know it was going to be this easy.  That’s always good!

Kristin:  And you have different designs.  You brought some samples with you.  There’s a fun funky orange and pink and…

Liz:  It’s interesting you say that because the design is pretty much the same.  The only difference is the colors and the fibers.  The blue, pink, orange, and gray here are all in the moisture-wicking synthetic fibers, and these more neutral colors, this neural white-pearl and this cloud-gray are the bamboo.  The best-selling ones are the grays, the grays in both the synthetic and the bamboo, and then orange.  Everyone loves neutrals.  The way this is made is a really interesting process.  One of the benefits of the Swaddelini is that it’s seamless, and it’s seamless because it’s actually manufactured in one piece, in one process, using 3D knitting.  Kind of like the Nike Flyknit shoes.  It’s the same technology, and I have a machine that knits all of these in my garage.  I make them all myself.  I don’t have some manufacturer in China that I outsource this too.  So it’s very, very local.  And it’s actually my life’s work.  I’ve been a 3D knit programmer for over ten years now and working primarily in technical knitting, knitting solutions for office furniture and automotive and aerospace and stuff like that.  But when I had my first baby two and a half years ago, I had an idea to use that same process to solve my swaddling problem.  That became Swaddelini.

Alyssa:  That’s amazing!  You said there’s a couple tiny stitches you have to do yourself at the very end?

Liz:  At the very top because it’s all made with this one end of yard.  At the very top, you have to pull it through a loop and then that’s the final thing that I do.  And I sew on these cute little tags with washing information and stuff like that.

Alyssa:  Yeah, what is the washing information?

Liz:  For the synthetic fiber, I recommend cold.  It will shrink up a bit, but honestly, if that happens to you, let me know.  I can work something out with you because I don’t want someone to get it and have it shrink.  I recommend that, and then air drying it is fine.  But for the bamboo ones, I actually prewash them in a natural, unscented detergent, so they’re already preshrunk.  They won’t shrink anymore.  You can wash and dry them in heat, but I still recommend cold just for longevity.

Alyssa:  Things look better.  I wash all my stuff in cold.  They just last so much longer.

Kristin:  Thanks, Liz!  We appreciate you coming in!  How do people order or find you?

Alyssa:  Well, if you’re a Gold Coast client, you can get a discount.  But for everyone else, what’s the best way to order these?

Liz:  On my website, but if you want to learn more about my product before you buy it, I highly recommend going on my Instagram, @swaddelini, because I have a lot moms on there that have shared their videos of how they use it because every mom might use my product differently.

Kristin:  It’s great for the visual learners.

Alyssa:  I’m going to add this to my newborn class repertoire because I think some people get overwhelmed with the old-fashioned swaddle, and like you said, if you have a really strong baby, they’re popping out of this thing.  So this is a great option, and they’re super cute!

Kristin:  We will definitely check in with you after, since you’re a client of ours, and we can see how it’s working with your own baby and also hear your birth story.  We love hearing personal stories!

Liz:  Well, I’m really excited to have doula support this time because I didn’t last time, and I definitely regret it.

Alyssa:  Yeah, we can have you back in to talk about that and how it was with doulas.

Liz:  That would be awesome!