Reading Rachel Myr's response to the swaddling study (Comparison of behavior
modification with and without swaddling as interventions for excessive
crying. J Pediatrics 149) summary that I posted was confusing to me at first
because the information she quoted seemed different or missing from the
summary that I copied from Medscape.  So I went back and looked at the
abstract on PubMed, and was surprised to see different information than in
the summary! (seems to me the summary concluded no benefit of swaddling for
over 8 weekers and minimal benefit for under 8 wks, while the abstract seems
to say that there's a significant benefit to swaddling the younger ones.)
How strange.
Rachel wondered how decreasing crying/fussy time which was baseline 4hrs
37min by 42% would fit in with decreasing crying by only 10minutes. I read
it as the nurses taught parents some techniques that didn't include
swaddling for the first week and that cut all the infant sample's crying by
42%; then they went on to add swaddling to their experimental group while
continuing to do whatever else they were doing before, and that adding
swaddling only decreased crying by 10 minutes, which does seem quite a
"modest" reduction indeed.
In a recent presentation I attended by Marsha Walker, she reminded us to
read the whole thing; not to count on the summary or abstract!  This is an
interesting example of that, and I look forward to reading the whole study
when I get to our clinical library.

This all reminds me of that quote "Lies, damned lies and statistics"...

And I agree; it's heartbreaking that parents are taught that infant crying
for 2-3hours per day is "normal".

Susan Lawrence

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