Heart-Beat Rhythm Stops Baby’s Cry

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30190, 23 July 1963, Page 2

Heart-Beat Rhythm Stops Baby’s Cry

Investigations into the influence of the maternal heartbeat rhythm have shown that when babies in a hospital nursery are exposed to the sound of an artificial heart beat they cry less, sleep better and gain more weight. Young children fell asleep in half the time when exposed to the heart-beat sound, according to “Parents’ Centres." the official bulletin of the New Zealand Federation of Parents' Centres.

As other rhythmic sounds did not have this result, it indicated that babies needed to be held close to the heart often, and that no harm was done if they were allowed to fall asleep in their mother’s arms rather than in their bassinets. The bulletin also described investigations carried out byProfessor H. F. Harlow, of the University of Wisconsin, of the behaviour of baby monkeys raised in eages with imitation mothers. In the key experiment, the infant was raised in a cage with access to two cubicles, one containing a cloth dummy mother, the other a wire dummy mother, both with a milk supply. During experiments in

which the infants were subjected to fear (such as a moving toy bear), they sought protection from the cloth dummy, including the baby monkeys who got their milk supply from the wire dummy. “The experiment destroys the theory that the infant is attached to his mother because it is she who feeds him,” the bulletin says. Food was needed for survival, but it was the warm and close bodily contact that made an infant feel comfortable and secure.

Hospitals had been at fault, as it seemed so much more efficient to segregate the newborn in a sterile nursery, and to carry them every few hours to their mothers for a feeding.