As a kid embedded within an extended Italian family, I recall many school nights going to my Nonna and Nonno’s house to celebrate someone’s birthday.

I also remember those half hour trips home in the dark.

My parents probably thought I was asleep in the back of the car. After all, driving your kid around in a car at night is a sure way to get them to sleep, right?

Well, that didn’t work for me.

But a Zoom meeting this week got me thinking about how motion may help some people sleep…

Rocking A Bye Baby …

I never understood why anyone would want to rock-a-bye-baby on a treetop? Anyways …

On Friday, Dr Michal Kahn and myself had a meet-and-greet with Dr Harvey Karp and the good folks at SNOO.

SNOO is a baby’s crib that rocks in response to sound that comes from within the crib.

So if a baby starts to grizzle, it begins to rock. If the baby cries, the crib rocks more.

To be honest, I went into the meeting quite skeptical, as I had my own beliefs about rocking a child to sleep.

But by the end of the meeting, I was convinced the SNOO can be a good thing.

Where it stands out is that it:

• helps to increase big blocks of sleep within the first 6 months of life (when a baby’s sleep biology is still developing).

• Specifically, it’s touted to improve sleep at around 2-3 months of age

• It reduces co-sleeping in the bed, which is the most life-threatening ‘technique’ for infant sleep

So for some of those parents at their ‘wits end’ - who cannot wait for their baby’s biology to develop by 6 months of age - this could be a Godsend.

As for those beliefs of mine, they have altered a bit.

One belief is that the baby becomes dependent on being rocked to sleep by the parent. We see this when parents - at least in our home town of Adelaide - go to an overnight stay with nurses from Child & Youth Health, and the baby is in a crib that rocks. The baby inevitably sleeps better.

But when the parents and the baby get home, there is no rockable crib, and the baby’s sleep gets worse.

Then they come and see us.

The other belief though, comes from a single sentence on a single Powerpoint slide that was presented by my colleague and friend Prof Candice Alfano.

Candice found a decent link between a school child’s anxiety, and whether they were rocked to sleep as a baby.

Now this is just one study, and it was a retrospective report. This means there could be 2 reasons for the link:

1. Rocking a baby to sleep will cause that child to be more anxious later in life

2. Children are born a certain way (ie, susceptible to anxiety), and some need more parental attention and protection across their lifespan (if untreated).

Until there are more studies looking at this link, we don’t know which is the best of the 2 reasons to explain this link.

The one thing about the SNOO is that it collects data. So when the good folks at SNOO were offering that we could collaborate with them on research projects, I wondered if in the years to come, that there will be enough data to see if babies who were rocked more in the SNOO experience greater anxiety when they become school kids?

The Kids Aren’t Alright

Within the first couple of years of opening my Child & Adolescent Sleep Clinic, I had a ‘first’.

By this, I mean my first child client who had ‘Rhythmic Movement Sleep Disorder’.

This sleep disorder can occur with other issues in kids (eg, Autism).

But this school kid didn’t have Autism.

So as I usually do - I didn’t promise a result - but said that I’d investigate the scientific literature over the week and make a decision about whether I could offer anything.

It so happens the mum - who was a scientist herself - also took the week to do some research.

She found a online group of mums in New Zealand who had school kids experiencing the same thing. And their solution was to buy a waterbed.

That sort of solution can be a bit of a risk, as it’s a big expense.

But I guess when you aren’t sleeping well, you’re willing to spend $$$ to get that rest you need.

So she bought a waterbed, turned up to our session the following week, only to tell me her son’s sleep was fixed.

How? Well I can only hypothesise that many children find that motion is soothing, and helps to regulate their emotions and arousal.

So if you have a waterbed, you can make the first wave, and the bed does the rest.

I’d love to do a proper clinical trial on this - but as you can imagine, it gets tricky to post waterbeds to families…

Rock And Roll All Nite

If some premature children’s, babies’, and school kids’ sleep can benefit from motion - can adults too?

It’s certainly a question I’d like to know - because I’m one of those people sitting in the dark, looking around at everyone else fast asleep … on a plane.

How do they do it?

Well, I may not be alone.

A search of the scientific literature suggests this is an understudied area of sleep research. What is available suggests I keep the same company as Oil rig workers (who report more sleep problems in relation to the movements on an oil rig) - but not sailors of a Navy catamaran (Archibald, 2005).

This lack of consensus on the therapeutic effects of motion on the sleep of adults may explain why this market hasn’t taken off.

Remember the SleepWave?

I was invited to the Australian launch of the SleepWave back in 2010.

It was a big event - to mark the introduction of a new device to treat insomnia. You would wear these clips over your ears and it would simulate motion.

The other big thing about SleepWave was that it was a flop (check out their link at the bottom of this news article).

But this doesn’t mean your bed has to stay completely still.

For example, if you suffer from gastric reflux during sleep, I’ve heard elevating your bed can reduce sleep disruptions.

This is where companies like Ergomotion come in and produce beds that ‘move’.

I’m also aware of another invention soon to be released in the US market that will also lift the top of the bed, so you can keep your existing bed frame.

But for now, it seems that there is a vacuum of data on this topic. So we cannot conclude that motion can help adults sleep …

• Prof Michael Gradisar

Disclaimer: I’ve got no relationship with SNOO, Ergomotion, the SleepWave, or Oil Rigs.