Rock-a-bye Your Baby

The baby carrier is a tool to allow the carer to comfortably use movements to calm and settle an infant. Watch an experienced mother as she places a tired or cranky baby into a baby carrier and see that she begins immediately to move.

These rhythmic movements are as old as time. Part dance, part walk, movements occur at a rhythm matching the mothers heartbeat in the womb, while her moving body is also familiar from life inside her body. The mother might add humming or shine sounds in time with her rocking movements. There can be an element of vertical movement as well as side to side and pacing to an internal beat. She pars the beat on the back or bottom while she rocks and moves.This is primal knowledge, observable in small children playing with dolls. Instinctively or modelled in childhood, this combination of firm support, rhythmic movement and white noise mimicking the heart rate can create calm in a baby who needs help to relax and be ready for sleep.

Many products like swings and rockers claim to have the same effect but the missing factor: a human who is invested in this child, cannot be replicated. A caring parent, grandparent, sibling, aunt/uncle, friend or caregiver can build this connection by reassuringly replicating "the dance" with their own routine of movement following the basics:

💜 set your rhythm to match your heartbeat

🚶 walk, rock, dance at that same beat

🖐 pat the baby on their back or bottom matching the heartbeat.

🤫 SSH... mmm ... or play a white noise app on your phone

👫 Share the method which works for you but allow other carers to make it their own.