Maternal responsiveness to infant crying

ABSTRACT

Colic is a disorder in which an infant has episodes of uncontrollable crying, which often occurs at a predictable times of day or night. The aim of this work is to determine the frequency rate of various calming technique, and how mothers soothed their crying infants. Four hundred twenty one mothers with infants of six months old or below were recruited in this study in Hilla city. A questionnaire comprise on the gender of the baby, mother age and her education level [measured on a scale of 0-6 from illiterate, to postgraduate training], and asking about 21 calming methods of how the mothers soothed her crying baby. It was completed though direct interview of the mothers. Data were analyzed using the statistical package SPSS [version 15.0]. The most common quieting technique used by mothers was holding and carrying the infant [93.1%]. The other common techniques were infant rocking [91.7%], abdominal massage [87.9%], taking to bed [87.2%], administer breast feeding [68.4%], swaddling infant [64.6%], prone sleeping position [64.1%], music [62.5%], night bottle [53.7%], bathing [51.1%], and around one third [36.1%] of mothers preferred to use pacifier. Herbs were used as a remedy for soothing crying infants in [16.4%]. Pain killer was used by 33% of mothers to quiet their babies. Forty six mothers and another 11 mothers had used smothering and slapping of their infants as calming techniques respectively. There was a clear effect of cultural differences in the selection of calming technique. A potentially injurious method for calming infants such as slapping, and smothering was reported in this study