Researchers say they’ve found a simple method to soothe a crying baby, and help them sleep – and it involves nothing more than movement and cuddling.
Every parent knows how frustrating, and heartbreaking, it can be when babies won’t settle and sleep. But scientists say their small study has uncovered an easy way to soothe crying bubs.
The Japanese researchers found that holding a crying baby and walking with them for five minutes, followed by sitting and holding them for another five to eight minutes before putting them to bed was an effective way to promote sleep.
“Many parents suffer from babies’ nighttime crying,” said corresponding author Kumi Kuroda from the RIKEN Center for Brain Science in Japan. “That’s such a big issue, especially for inexperienced parents, that can lead to parental stress and even to infant maltreatment in a small number of cases,” she says.
Kumi and her fellow researchers compared the responses of 21 babies while under four different conditions: being held by their walking mums, held by their sitting mums, laying in a cot or laying in a rocking cot.
What they discovered was that the babies who were being held by their walking mothers calmed and their heart rates slowed within 30 seconds. When the babies were put in a rocking cot, it had a similar effect. But the babies didn’t calm when they were simply held while the mother sat, or if they were placed in a normal cot.
The researchers say this suggests that simply holding a baby might not be enough to soothe a crying baby. However movement seems to be the key to calming little ones.
However, once the mums tried to put their sleepy babies to bed, more than a third of them became alert again within 20 seconds. All of the babies were producing physiological responses, like a change in heart rate, which woke them up the second they were no longer being held by their mums. The researchers discovered that if the babies were asleep for a little while longer before being put into the cot, they were less likely to wake up.
“Even as a mother of four, I was very surprised to see the result.”
“I thought baby awoke during a laydown is related to how they’re put on the bed, such as their posture, or the gentleness of the movement,” Kumi said. “But our experiment did not support these general assumptions.”
Based on their findings, the researchers recommend parents hold their crying babies for five minutes and walk with them, followed by sitting and holding their baby for another five to eight minutes, before finally putting them to bed.
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Ellen replied
- 16 Sep 2022 , 7:45 am
Reply6:46 am
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