Benefits to Swaddle Bathing

Swaddle bathing is a technique that entails bathing an infant while they are comforted in a swaddle. This technique is rarely seen in everyday hospital practice, even though there is ample evidence of its benefits and advantages. Our project aimed to combine research proving the effectiveness of swaddle bathing through scoring methods that consider pain, vital signs, temperature, crying duration, and more. The research is combined to support the impact that swaddle bathing can have on not only infants but parents as well. Parents implementing the swaddle bath enjoy improved confidence and attachment, along with decreased stress. The evidence was then presented to a local hospital Labor and Delivery unit which currently bathes using the sponge bath method. Our presentation included our theoretical framework, Kolcaba’s Comfort Theory (1992), which helped guide the goal of the project: improving comfort and maintaining homeostasis in the infant.