New parents are often overwhelmed with all the new responsibility of taking care of their little bundle of joy. To add fuel to the fire some newborns can cry excessively, have colic, or be difficult to put to sleep. Desperate and tired parents will consult every parenting and baby book available and spend endless hours surfing the web when they should be sleeping to find a cure.
There are many suggestions out there when it comes to calming and putting a baby to sleep, but what really works?
A new study found that a swaddling an infant and operating under a routine are effective means to reduce crying and help sleep for most infants.
A total of 400 infants who cried more than three hours at least one day a week were enrolled in the study with their parents. Each set of parents were instructed on how to develop and initiate a daily routine including sleeping and eating habits. They were also instructed on means to reduce stimuli and provide a healthy sleeping environment.
Then half of the parents were educated in the art of swaddling and told to swaddle their infants nightly.
They found that infants who were less than eight weeks old reduced their crying time when both swaddling and a routine were initiated. If the infants were older than eight weeks swaddling did not affect outcome when a regular routine was initiated.
All of the infants cried less after just the first week of the eight week study. By one week the average length of crying was about an hour and then after the total eight weeks crying decreased to just 40 minutes per episode on average.
The full study can be found in the October issue of the Journal of Pediatrics.
Overall the study stresses the importance of routine and decreased stimuli to an infant. Many times parents try to do too much with a newborn, taking the baby on errands, shopping, etc. Excessive stimuli can cause poor sleep, irritability, and make for an unhappy baby. And that makes for some unhappy and sleep deprived parents.
Posted by Dr. Christina Gutierrez on November 9, 2006 05:11 PM
