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Making Baby’s Shots Less Tearful
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... shots-less-tearful/
Infant vaccinations can be a distressing experience for both parent and child. But new research suggests that parents can lessen the sting of an injection by soothing their babies with a quick series of comforting measures, including a popular technique called swaddling.
The method, popularized by the book “The Happiest Baby on the Block,” by Dr. Harvey Karp, a pediatrician, involves five measures known as the five S’s. In addition to swaddling, or wrapping the baby snugly in a light blanket, they include putting the baby in a side or stomach position in the guardian’s arms, gently swaying, having the baby suck on a pacifier, and making a shushing sound in the child’s ear. Together, the steps calm the baby by mimicking the sensations of being in the womb, according to Dr. Karp, and can be used more broadly by parents to ease a fussy or colicky baby.
In the new study, published in the journal Pediatrics, independent researchers put the five S’s to the test by training medical residents to use them on infants undergoing routine vaccination shots at their 2- and 4-month well-child visits. Infants typically receive at least three shots at their two-month checkup and two at their four-month visit.
The study’s leader, Dr. John Harrington of the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Norfolk, Va., was doubtful at the outset that the five S’s alone would have much of an effect. But he suspected that in combination with a dose of sugar water, commonly thought to reduce pain in infants, the technique might comfort crying babies immediately after the prick of a needle.
He and his colleagues set up four study groups involving 230 infants. Some were given a small dose of liquid just before their shots — either two milliliters of plain water (less than half a teaspoon) or the same amount of sugar water — and were comforted by a parent or guardian after their injections. In the other two groups, infants received one of the liquids, and then were comforted by a resident who was trained to perform the five S’s. The residents swaddled the babies within 15 seconds of the vaccination, held them in a side or stomach position in their arms, made a shushing noise while swaying, and offered the baby a pacifier.
A trained observer in the room watched for behaviors that indicated the infants’ levels of pain, like high-pitched screaming, grimacing and whimpering. The observers used a standard rating scale that assesses pain in infants.
Over all, the researchers found that using the five S’s — what they called the “physical intervention” — consistently produced the lowest pain scores, regardless of whether the infants were given sugar water before their shots.
“Going in, we thought that maybe sugar and the physical intervention would work together,” said Dr. Harrington, the division director of general academic pediatrics at the hospital. “But what we found was that just the physical intervention was good enough. You really didn’t need to give sugar prior to the shots.”
Dr. Harrington said that the residents were usually able to perform at least four of the five S’s. The least important step, he said, appeared to be giving the babies a pacifier. “Sometimes the babies didn’t want to suck and would spit out the binky or pacifier,” he said. “It seemed like that wasn’t always necessary to do.”
The most crucial step, he said, appeared to be swaddling, which was also the toughest one for the residents to learn. Residents watched a video that outlined proper technique; wrapping the baby too tightly, for example, can raise the risk of hip dysplasia, an earlier report found. The study also included a link to a YouTube clip that demonstrates the method.
Dr. Harrington said that he — and many of the parents — were surprised by the difference it made.
“I’ll be honest, I was a nonbeliever; that’s why I did this study,” he said. “But when you see it happen where you’ve got this child who is crying and flailing, and you do the swaddle and you get them in the sideline position and you’re doing the shushing in their ear and they kind of go into a quick trance, it really does seem like a calming reflex has been triggered.
“And the parents would go, ‘Wow, show me how to do that.’ ” |
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