Team led by Japanese researchers reveals best way to put crying baby to sleep

When we had our kid we also carried her everywhere, it has been pretty popular in Sweden for a while. It helps a lot with being close but still the cause of the crying has to be investigated. After a long period of no proper sleep we finally figured out what the problem was. Baby was allergic to milk protein and was crying because of the pain it caused. Due to bad knowledge and advice we only tried ruling out milk allergy for a week but it takes many weeks for the milk protein to leave the mothers system. When we got baby formula without milk protein our baby could sleep without pain and the dry skin spots went away. I'm wondering if most problems with crying babies are from undiagnosed milk protein allergy. It usually disappears during the first seven years.

Carried both my kids like this. They loved it. So much more convenient than a pram, you have both your hands free so great for shopping etc.

Cool, interesting perspective. Love HN for being so international, despite the US origin.

Also much better than the version we see in Europe where people carry the baby on the front side for reasons that I can’t fathom…

> By sitting down to rest after the baby stops crying, they can apparently be put into a deep sleep.

It seems stopping crying is a precondition for the "sit and wait" step.

Isn't the walking around with the baby the thing that makes it stop crying though?

> proximity sensor

Is this just the absense of your body heat? Or can you sit next to a newborn for hours without issue

Very tangentially related, an old trick that often works with small (dog) puppies crying at night when separated from their mother is to put them into their basket together with a (warm) hot water bottle and a mechanical alarm clock (those old ones that tick very loud) wrapped in a blanket.

In that case it is the combination of (fake) body warmth + (fake) heartbeat that makes them sleep, since we are mammals/animals too, the mechanism for babies is likely similar.

At the extreme, do you think generating whitenoise from a phone would have the same effect?

Bad advice. Swaddling might stop your baby crying but it leads to a bunch of unwanted side effects:

- increased risk of sudden infant death

- delayed development of motor skills

- 4x increased risk of respiratory infections

- increased risk of dysplasia

When babies are swaddled they quickly notice that no amount of squealing or crying changes their situation.

Our four month old moves a lot when she gets tired. I carry her around and let her shift and stir in my arms until she calms down. I won't block any of her movements. I won't hold her tight, but allow her to move freely in any direction she wants. From the back, to the side, to the belly and back. She looks around the room until she gets tired. Moving around helps, because changing visual focus tires babies and makes them fall asleep faster.

It's sometimes inconvenient to carry her around for an hour or so, but eventually she falls asleep. I take these moments as an opportunity to bond with her.

Magic Merlin is awesome but it's for a pretty short duration and then you have to wean for sleep sacks right? That was my understanding at least, so we went right to a sleep sack and just bundled it with sleep training to avoid the extra step. But so many of our friends swear by the merlin.

+1 to some sort of "engineered swaddle" that restrains the arms effectively.

We found "traditional" swaddles to be unreliable - once the arm/arms were out then it is only a matter of time before they hit themselves in the face with their arms, but swaddles with specific features to prevent the escape of the arms to work really well.

We used one called Miracle Swaddle for both our kids. Just make sure you stop using swaddles as soon as the kid can roll on their own.

Upvote from me. As a dad of a 5 day old (and a 3 1/2 year old) any hints on how I can help sooth baby for even relatively short periods of time would be super helpful.

The problem is with a breastfed baby they are very focused on getting their milk supply where it needs to be and if that means feeding practically constantly for hours at a time, that's fine by them.

Oh god, stop. Can you just read about this research without making judgements about social justice please?!

Look around you, do you see a lot of moms with babies?

1. It's an exploratory study which both confirms previous results and builds on them. Furthermore, a sample size of 21 is not too inherently small to draw conclusions - that would depend on the effect sizes between conditions...

2. The study is explicitly about whether or not the children stay asleep after the different proposed routines. This is one of the main points of the article and is directly addressed within:

"When an infant falls asleep in one’s arms or in a stroller, parents would then want to put the infant to bed. However, this laydown procedure often makes the infant alert again. In this study, 9 of 26 (34.6%) sleeping infants awoke by 20 s after the laydown, while the remaining 17 infants stayed asleep. "

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(22)01363...

Why comment with a critique if you didn't even have a cursory look at the paper, or even understand what the dependant variables are?

I'm getting quite depressed by the increase prevelence of these types of dismissive comments on studies. You see this exact argument posted especially on Reddit.

The second increasingly common popular comment is "Yeah but is it causal? and not correlation?", including popular follow ups such as did they correct for socio economic status? (Which in the vast majority of studies, they always do)

I'm curious to know if the posters of these comments have been to univsersity / college? Have they taken any classes on the basics of scientific method? I remember my bachelors had a course on it, at least.

It's great that more people are interested in science, but it's not great that people dismiss entire studies because they do not understand how science works.

atleast read the link before commenting nonsense.

Yeah at the early stages the cries seem to just be gas, food, nappy, or attention.

We found that "la pause" is quite effective - let them fuss for up to a minute or so rather than rushing to the cot to intervene. A lot of the time they can work it out themselves without any help.

Same here. I feel like I tune into the low frequencies of either the engine or the motion of the vehicle itself and I fall asleep instantly.

I was quite worried when I learnt to drive that it would be an issue. Fortunately not, having tasks to concentrate on foils the effect

My guess is the combination of low frequency rumbling, and a rocking motion, and the feeling of getting somewhere (accomplishment).

The real challenge for parents is not falling asleep while sitting and holding a sleeping infant.

I found that the more you carry your child the less she cries. I was just carrying my child wherever I went with a strap around my front, which I found more practical than a buggy until she became too heavy.

I read a study that children that are carried all the time cry a substantial amount less than children that are not, something like half an hour less per day.

I've heard a lot of good things about the https://www.happiestbaby.com/products/snoo-smart-bassinet.

It's expensive but my first child slept terribly; I'm not taking chances with my second.

FWIW, my kids hated a rocking chair, but loved being held while gently bouncing/wiggling on a gym/yoga ball thing