The not-so-miracle blanket

I've been promising to post a detailed review of my experience with the miracle blanket, and here it is!  I had heard a lot about these types of "easy-on" swaddle blankets during my pregnancy and I thought they were all so clever and convenient. I considered the Woombie but I couldn't get over how odd it  looked and I was a bit worried about the zipper so I decided to try the miracle blanket instead, but never got around to buying it. After the first night home from the hospital, which my husband still refers to as parent boot camp, we both came to the conclusion that our baby slept much better when she was tightly swaddled. At that point we hadn't really gotten the hang of swaddling and every time we used the Aden & Anais muslin blankets she was able to get her arms out.

The very next morning I asked my husband to get me the miracle blanket from the store or anything similar to it.  But the Target store he went to claimed they didn't have carry it nor did they have anything similar in stock. It turns out they did have the Swaddleme blanket by Summer Infant which is kinda similar but the sales rep he spoke to didn't care enough to help him find it. So instead he bought the Garanimals receiving blankets because they reminded him of the hospital blankets and he was convinced we would get tighter swaddle with those over the A&A blankets. He was right but I still wanted the miracle blanket.  I was pretty disappointed when he didn't come home with it so I quickly got online and ordered it. I happily read through all the glowing reviews and I was sure that this miracle blanket would work for us  too help my newborn stay asleep! I eagerly waited for it to arrive in the mail and immediately washed it and hung it to dry. Once it was dry I smiled at my husband and said tonight we will finally get some sleep!!!  But boy was I wrong.

As you can see from the photos below,  the miracle blanket is designed in such a way that it has a pocket in which you place the baby's legs.Then  you wrap the inner flaps over the baby's arms and then under their back. This ensures that they can't break free from the swaddle. Then you  use the outer flaps to wrap around their entire body as you would with a regular blanket. In theory it sounds like a genius fool-proof idea, and all the reviews seemed to agree with this. But I guess it doesn't work for every baby. In fact I can't understand how it works for any baby.



 

Why we hated it: As you can see, the inner flaps that wrap around the arms are very wide, actually wider than the entire length of the arm of a newborn, so when you wrap these flaps over the baby's arm, the fabric bunches up much worse than the photo shows. (The baby in the photo is not a newborn.) By the time you have wrapped both arms with the inner flaps, you have a lot of fabric bunched awkwardly around the arms and under the baby's back which then makes them less likely to fall asleep. This was one of my laughing til I cried moments. I laughed because my baby looked so ridiculously uncomfortable in this overpriced contraption. She was crying and struggling to get out of it, and I was so dissappointed and frustrated with it that I had to laugh.  Another thing I hated about it is that the "pocket" for the baby's legs is huge. This allows them to freely kick their legs around and thus wake themselves up. I also didn't like the fabric of this blanket at all. It felt quite cheap and not soft at all.

 I really wanted to like this product so I tried it many times that night and then watched the demo video on their site several times too. I hated it more with each try. To make matters worse, is the fact that newborns go through many diaper changes, so every time you change their diaper at night you would have to go through the lengthy process of getting them out of this "miracle" blanket and then putting them back in. By the time you are done,the baby will no longer be sleepy or drowsy but instead wide awake and not too pleased about it.

I honestly don't understand why this product has such great reviews.  As far as I am concerned the only miracle about this blanket is the fact that people have given it such glowing reviews.