As a parent, you have faced a situation where you put your baby to sleep, but they wake up crying and won’t stop even if you try singing or swaddling them. You don’t have to worry about that anymore as researchers in Japan have discovered a solution to the problem.
Holding a crying baby and walking can help calm them
According to scientists, a five-minute walk and cuddling in a chair can calm your baby and put them back to sleep. The study authors say that cuddling and carrying kids offers a free and efficient strategy that is more successful than a simple embrace. It alters physiological processes, lowering the heart rate among them. According to the report, all parents must be provided with this guidance.
Based on the findings, the scientists are looking to create an app that will notify parents when they should pick up their kids.
RIKEN Center for Brain Science’s Dr. Kumi Kuroda, the study author, stated, “Many parents suffer from babies’ nighttime crying. 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.”
Several parents have experienced the occasional annoyance and inconvenience of a crying baby. Unfortunately, some people experience it frequently, which interferes with the baby’s sleep cycle and causes worry for the parents. In both disturbed mouse pups and newborn humans, Dr. Kuroda and the team have discovered a “transport response” that causes them to settle down upon being held by their parents.
A rocking cot produces the same effect as holding the baby and walking around.
The phenomenon is a complicated network of simultaneous biological systems observed in monkeys and dogs. Whenever the mother picked up the baby and walked around, the baby stopped crying, and the heart rate decreased in less than 30 seconds. The same effects are seen when the baby is placed in a rocking cot but not when the mother holds them while sitting or in a crib. Therefore, just holding the baby is not sufficient to soothe it.
