My husband and I had a gorgeous baby boy this summer. As the first few months of parenthood are a marathon of sleep deprivation, when we discovered the secret to getting our son to sleep through the night – swaddling – it was all I could talk about for weeks.

(For those of you unfamiliar with the term, swaddling involves using a square blanket and some specific folding techniques to wrap your child in a nice snug blanket cocoon. The power of this technique to soothe babies and help them sleep longer lies in two simple facts: 1) It simulates the cozy, if restricted environment they were so used to living in for nine months in the womb. This familiarity is comforting to them. 2) It prevents them from flailing around and hitting or scaring themselves. Infants don’t have control over their appendages, nor do they even really recognize that those things flailing around and, at times, whacking them in the face even belong to them. Swaddling prevents the unexpected appearance of said appendages by keeping them snugly tucked in near the infant’s body.)

In one of the first weeks after my discovery of swaddling, I was spouting off about my discovery of this miracle tool at my regular writer’s group meeting and the joy of having eight hour of sleep in a row. As I spoke, the eyes of Carrie Gallant, a fellow writer and a specialist in the art of negotiation for women, lit up with a laugh.

“That is amazing,” she commented, “On the drive here today I was just thinking about swaddling and how that is what I need to keep me focused on key areas I need to build my business and keep me from flailing around trying to do so many different things.”

A lively discussion about swaddling as a metaphor for the value of coaching and for the kind of support necessary for success ensued. Here are the main points:

We are like babies. When faced with change, whether internally imposed by our attempt to learn and grow or externally imposed by a change in our environment/circumstances we flail around a lot, fall down, and generally spend more time getting it wrong than getting it right. This is scary, frustrating and exhausting. We don’t understand that the appendage that keeps hitting us in the face actually belongs to us. Having a mentor or coach helps to gently restrain us from hurting ourselves. It wraps us in a cocoon of confidence from the assurance of someone else’s experience so that we can relax and rest awhile before getting back to the inevitable work of growing.

Just like our son, Zen, most people rebel against swaddling at first. Free choice is part of the gift of being human, so it is natural to dislike being given limits. Yet it is precisely by creating boundaries for ourselves, setting limits, and enforcing deadlines that we also create freedom – the freedom that comes from following something through to completion.

Andrea Jacques

 Print this post?