So You Can Quickly Calm Your Baby

One question many parents ask: How do I put my crying baby to sleep? Researchers now believe they have found the answer.

Japanese researchers have developed the latest instructions to calm crying babies. Parents should move their crying baby near their body at a steady pace for about five minutes, if possible without sudden movements, the team reports in the respected journal Current Biology. As soon as he falls asleep, they should sit with him for about eight minutes and only then put him to sleep.

“Many parents suffer from their babies crying at night,” says lead author Kumi Kuroda, of the RIKEN Center for Brain Science (CBS) in Waco. “It’s a big problem, especially for inexperienced parents, that can lead to parenting distress and, in some cases, even infant abuse.”

The 13-minute concept was developed by scientists working with Kuroda in a test run with 21 infants in four positions: babies were kept walking or sitting and placed in an immovable or moving bed, such as That a pram that moved back and forth. Responses were recorded, and the children’s heartbeats were recorded via EKG.

The crying babies calmed down in about 30 seconds and their heart rate slowed down as the mother walked in carrying them. All the babies stopped crying, about half of them fell asleep. If mothers tried to put their sleeping babies to sleep, more than a third of babies woke up within 20 seconds. If they fell asleep a few minutes before lying down, they were less likely to wake up.