My parents had two favorite stories they would recount about my time as an infant.

The first was when my folks had to go somewhere and they couldn’t bring me along, They loaded me up in my bassinet (come on, folks, there were no car seats back then), put it (and me) in the back seat of the car, and then drove around the neighborhood for 15 minutes.  Because in that time, I routinely feel fast asleep.

The second was a corollary to that story.  It seems that one time the baby sitter took about 45 minutes to arrive.  So, before my folks would leave, they wanted to ensure that I was fast asleep.   So, my mom, in her evening attire, took off her shoes and crawled into my room on her hands and knees.  As she approached my crib, she looked up and saw me standing up (holding on to the bars) looking down on her.  They assumed I was flabbergasted to see my mom crawling and I was desperate to know what they were doing.  (Yes, I have always been a very light sleeper.)

All that is an introduction to a new study that has determined the best way to get a crying baby to calm down and fall asleep.  The parent should walk around with the baby; the “transport response” involves the slowing down of the baby’s heart rate and the baby becomes more passive.

Note that some 20 to 30% of babies under the age of 7 months seem to cry excessively and fight off sleep for no reason.  Which is why some new moms panic and/or react negatively to their new infants.  They have a hard time trying to placate the infant, to make it stop crying and to calm down.  Those parents in particular need to learn to adopt these techniques so they can feel they are masters of their new families.

Dr. KO Kuroda (Rizen Center for Brain Science, Sailama Japan) and his compatriots there, Drs. N Ohmura,  L Okuma, A Truzzi, A Saito, K Shinozuka, E Miyazawa, and G Esposito; along with Drs. S Yokota and M. Shimizu (Salaima Cardiovascular and Respiratory Center) and Dr. A Bizzego  (University of Trento, Italy) published the results of their study in Current Biology.  (A method to soothe and promote sleep in crying infants utilizing the transport response)

The group already knew the transport response existed in other mammals, so it would be logical if it manifested in humans, too.  The study involved 21 infants (10 F, 11M, mean age 3.4 months)) in Italy and Japan, all less than 7 months of age.  Four different methods of calming the infants were tested- holding the baby while walking, rocking them back and forth in a baby carriage (pram) or a rocking cot; holding them while seated, and laying them down in a cot.  Each test was 5 minutes long- and were effected in the mother’s home or the laboratory, according the preference of the mom. (32 test sessions;  17 in Japan, 15 in Italy.)

(The infants were also hooked up to heart monitors (Holter electrocardiogram).  That data indicated that their heart rates diminished when their moms carried them.)

There wasn’t enough data for a comparison, but preliminary results indicated that dads walking with the babies also calmed them down.  In other words, it wasn’t just the gender of the walker.

By the way, the infant age was kept under 7 months because that’s seems to be the cut off point at which babies should begin learning to settle themselves down.

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