While searching the internet for cute pictures of baby’s in history (mostly to look at their clothes) I inevitably came across a lot of pics of swaddling.

The Swaddling in itself means that you wrap your infant tightly in cloth, so as to resemble the tight and warm uterus of their mothers.

This practice was wide spread and lasted at least from the medieval times to the late 18th/early 19 century, when the teachings of Rousseau became more accepted. In some countries the practice is still in use today – in fact, almost the first thing our nurse did after delivery was to wrap my baby really tight in a blanket, and tell us he should stay that way through the first night. So even here in Sweden it’s still used in some way.

Read more about the practice: wikipedia.org/Swaddling
A great resource with step to step pics of how to o it your self at: www.sharonburnston.com

Two infants swaddled, 17th century

Even though, nothing I would seriously consider for my baby, I was tempted to try it once – at least to get some cool historical locking photos of him.

I found instructions and tips in my new book “The Tudor Child” on how it was done in the 16th century (and probably long before and after)

The pieces needed for a proper swaddling during 16th century

A doll completely wrapped in linen to show how it should look once done.
(See the whole picture series and read more about Swaddling at www.sharonburnston.com/baby_linen/swaddling.html)

I decided quickly that I would not even try to make all the items called for, but to settle for the absolute minimum – a forehead cloth and a big linen square to wrap him in.

How it went?

Hm, not as good as one could hope…

Trying to tie the forehead cloth on a squirming and screaming infant is no easy task for a nervous new mom…

“Lets just settle for a few pics on the balcony, before the entire linen cloth falls of your little butt”.