Best Baby Sleep Sack 2018 (and how it’ll make your baby sleep better)

As a parent, you do whatever you can to help your baby sleep better.  It’s pretty simple: the more your baby sleeps, the more you can sleep.

When our daughter was a newborn, up until about 4 months old, we had a lot of crutches when it came to sleep. We used a rock ‘n play, a swaddle, a white noise maker, and the Magic Merlin sleep suit (which we wrote about here).

All of that was great, and worked for a little while.

But once she started getting bigger, moving around a lot more, and we moved her to her crib to sleep, we had to get rid of all these crutches (except the white noise).

Now what?

If you’re lucky and your baby is a good sleeper, you may not need to do anything else.  But for us, it was time to move onto the next logical sleep aid:

The baby sleep sack.

What is a baby sleep sack and how does it make your baby sleep better?  Which is the best baby sleep sack?

Keep reading, and we’ll get into all of that below.

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What’s a baby sleep sack and why would you want one?

Before we actually explore which is best baby sleep sack, let’s go over the basics.

A sleep sack is essentially a wearable blanket that you put on your baby, and it allows him or her to have full use of their arms and legs.

The American Academy of Pediatrics offers the following advice to reduce the risk of SIDS:

“Keep soft objects or loose bedding out of the crib. This includes pillows, blankets, and bumper pads.”

So, once you’ve transitioned away from the swaddle, the sleep sack is a safe way for your baby to feel warm and comforted without the dangers of sleeping with a blanket.

With the sleep sack, a baby can safely roll over in the crib without the risk of getting stuck face down and suffocating.  And although they can be fairly loose-fitting, it’s designed in such a way that the fabric can’t ride up and cover a baby’s face.

If you live in a warm climate and generally have warmer temperatures inside the house, a sleep sack may be unnecessary (and possible uncomfortable if it’s already too warm).  But for most homes where you (as the adult) would typically sleep with a blanket, a baby will typically enjoy sleeping in a sleep sack.

Recommended reading: 29 Parents Reveal the Secret to Improving Your Baby’s Sleeping Habits

The Best Baby Sleep Sack in 2018

As we typically do when we review products, we like to compare a few different options.  Just because we think something is the “best” doesn’t mean there aren’t good alternatives that you may like even more.

The Best Baby Sleep Sack: HALO Cotton Sleep Sack

We’ve tried several sleep sacks, and the one we keep going back to is the HALO 100% Cotton Sleep Sack.

It’s not too expensive ($15-$17, depending on the variety you choose), it fits well, feels high quality, and most importantly: it helps our daughter sleep well at night.

There are a couple other things we really like about this one:

1) The top area fits like a shirt, and the bottom is wide with lots of room.  This is important because it won’t ride up on your baby, and gives them lots of wiggle room with their feet. Every kid is different of course, but our daughter hates the feel of having her legs confined.

These sleep sacks have a lot of room at the bottom, which makes the baby feel more like they have a blanket over them vs. being trapped in a sack.

2) The zipper is smooth and opens from the bottom for easy changing. You’ll find that most sleep sacks will unzip from the bottom (so that you don’t have to take it off in order to change a diaper), but we really like the fact that the zipper is smooth and never gets stuck. We’ve tried cheaper sleep sacks before where the zipper sometimes gets stuck or is difficult to zip.

Overall, we recommend this sleep sack for any baby that has already transitioned away from a swaddle.

Click here to read more about the HALO Cotton Sleep Sack. 

Best Baby Sleep Sack for Swaddle Transition: HALO Sleep Sack Swaddle

If your baby is just starting to transition away from a pure swaddle but still needs that swaddle feeling, the HALO Sleep Sack Swaddle works great.

This only comes in smaller sizes (up to 18 lbs) so it’s really meant to be a transition for your newborn, not something that you would use for an older infant.

The great thing about this sleep sack is that you have a few options:

• Full swaddle (both arms in)
• Hands to face (i.e. part of the hand sticks out at the top so that the baby can self-soothe)
• 1 arm out – great for the beginning transition out of the swaddle
• Both arms out – used more like a traditional sleep sack where the baby has full access to his or her own arms, while still having that wrapped feeling around the middle section

Overall, this is a good choice if your baby is still a newborn because it can be used as a swaddle as well as a regular sleep sack.

Click here to read more about the HALO Sleep Sack Swaddle.

Other Sleep Sack Options

Another sleep sack that we liked (but just not as much as the HALO) is the Love to Dream Swaddle UP 50/50.

It’s another good transition sleep sack because you convert between just allowing some mobility with the arms, to actually having full mobility like a regular sleep sack.

This one has little “wings” that can be zipped on and off (it’ll make more sense if you look at the picture).

Although this wasn’t our favorite, it still worked well, and it’s actually what we sent to our daughter’s daycare for her to use during daytime naps.

Also, if you’re a fan of muslin material, HALO makes a 100% cotton muslin sleep sack as well.

We tried this one too and, although the material was nice, it seemed to ride up on our daughter more than the regular cotton one did.

Time for sleep!

That’s it for our view on the best baby sleep sack.  There’s a lot of variety out of there, but again, we felt the HALO sleep sacks were the best combination of quality and price.

If you haven’t used a sleep sack yet and you’re having a hard time getting your infant out of a swaddle, we highly recommend trying one.

Which sleep sack seemed to work best for your baby?  Leave a comment below!