Newborns can be rocked to sleep

Most newborns cry a lot and will keep crying if they are uncomfortable. Therefore, many parents hope that their children will sleep so that the baby will not cry. Some parents find that when they hold the baby and rock him, the baby will become very quiet, and the baby will fall asleep after rocking for a long time. Parents think that babies like to be rocked, so most parents like to let their babies sleep while being rocked. So, can newborns sleep while being rocked?

1 Why can’t newborn babies be rocked?

The baby's brain is fragile and soft, and it is easy for the brain to be concussed and cause cerebral hemorrhage

This Weibo post is indeed sensational, but in the eyes of doctors, it is not a new thing, because there is a disease called "shaken baby syndrome", also known as "cradle baby syndrome", which is caused by continuous shaking of the baby's brain, often causing damage to the head or brain without any external signs of injury.

The Weibo post was corroborated by a news story from more than two months ago. A new father in New Taipei City, Taiwan, had triplets. Because his seven-month-old daughter kept crying, he put her in a rocking chair and rocked her to comfort her. He soon discovered that the baby girl was foaming at the mouth and was in a coma. The couple rushed their daughter to the hospital, but unfortunately she was eventually pronounced dead. The police officer said the toddler had no obvious external injuries. The hospital analyzed that it might be "shaken baby syndrome". If the father used excessive force or shook the baby girl violently, it might damage the baby's brain.

Experts say that head and brain injuries in children caused by shaking are relatively extreme cases. Children's hospitals rarely encounter such cases, but there are 1-2 cases every year, and the injuries are usually quite serious. Some even suffer lifelong disabilities.

The brain of children under one year old is still in the development stage, and the skull grows much faster than the brain. Since the head of an infant accounts for about 25% of the body weight (10% for adults), and the infant's brain is softer and more fragile than that of an adult, and the neck muscles are weak, when the child is shaken, the fragile brain tissue will constantly collide with the skull wall, causing rupture of brain blood vessels and cerebral hemorrhage.