“Babies Should Be Bounced To Sleep"

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28938, 4 July 1959, Page 13

“Babies Should Be Bounced To Sleep"

(Rec. 11.10 pm.) MELBOURNE, July 3 Bounce a crying baby to sleep, don’t rock it, is an Australian doctor’s advice to sleepless par-

ents. , Mr Frederick Knowles, a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, who lives tn remote Wyndham in north-western Australia, says bouncing will silence an angry baby in seconds His experiments, he says, show that New Guinea natives and Australian aborigines know more about putting babies to sleep than today’s parents who walk toe floor and rock them.

Mr Knowles discovered the bouncing treatment when his own baby was born m New Guinea Taking a lead from the native women, he bounced the baby in a string bag till it went to sleep. The quick result he says in an article in the “Medical Journal of Australia,’’ prompted him to experiment and 'to find that the

treatment worked just well ,n a canvas bag. Mr Knowles says he also found an up-and-down movement was more effective than swinging or "He’found he could put his baby to sleep in a couple of seconds by Lifting him up and down—“albeit with very considerable physical exertion.” He Miso found that his methods of silencing angry, crying babies alarmed parents, so he installed a canvas cradle hanging from the ceiling by a spring On* tug of the cradle and toe baby moved rapidly up and down till it went to sleep.