Infant calming/sleep-aid device and method of use

Abstract

An infant calming / sleep-aid device includes a main moving platform that moves in a reciprocating manner and an actuator that drives the reciprocating movement of the main moving platform. The moving head platform is linked to the main moving platform and at least one of a motion sensing device and a sound sensing device are either at or proximate to a moving head platform that is pivotally linked to the main moving platform. A logic circuit links at least one of the motion and sound sensing devices of the infant calming / sleep aid-device to the main moving platform whereby signals detected modulate movement of the main moving platform. A sound generating device is linked to the logic circuit.

Description

RELATED APPLICATION[0001]This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61 / 549,627, filed on Oct. 20, 2011. The entire teachings of the above application are incorporated herein by reference.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]Persistent crying and poor infant sleep are perennial and ubiquitous causes of parent frustration. During the first months of life, babies fuss / cry an average of about 2 hours / day and wake about 2 to 3 times a night. One in six infants are brought to a medical professional for evaluation for sleep / cry issues.[0003]Infant crying and parental exhaustion are often demoralizing and lead to marital conflict, anger towards the baby and impaired job performance. In addition, they are primary triggers for a cascade of serious / fatal health sequelae, including postpartum depression (which affects about 15% of all mothers and about 25 to about 50% of their partners), breastfeeding failure, child abuse and neglect, suicide, SIDS / suffocation, maternal...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The invention is a system and method for calming fussy infants and improving their sleep by inducing a natural calming reflex through a specific movement and sound. The device moves the infant in a reciprocating manner, which helps reduce irritability during awake hours and improves sleep efficiency for babies up to one year old. The adaptive control system ensures a safe and controlled experience for the infant.

Problems solved by technology

Persistent crying and poor infant sleep are perennial and ubiquitous causes of parent frustration.

Infant crying and parental exhaustion are often demoralizing and lead to marital conflict, anger towards the baby and impaired job performance.

Swaddling also inhibits startling and flailing, which often interrupts sleep and starts / exacerbates crying.

Since the nominal level of a stimulus needed to reach the triggering threshold of the calming reflex differs from one child to the next, failure to exceed a particular child's threshold level often results in a total absence of a calming response.

For example, slow smooth motion may calm one upset infant, yet be too subdued to calm another.

However, despite the convenience and availability of swaddling, rhythmic motion and sound, these methods fail to calm and promote sleep in a large portion of the infant population because they are not being applied correctly.

However, this is problematic because sharing a bed with a parent has been proven to raise an infant's risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and accidental suffocation (which has been increasing by 14% per year for approximately twenty years).

The hazard of bed sharing is further elevated if the parent is extremely fatigued.

Like inebriation, exhaustion reduces adult judgment and responsiveness.

For this reason, sleeping with an exhausted parent further increases the SIDS risk associated with bed sharing and further increases the suffocation risk (e.g. from accidental overlaying of the parents body over the infant's head).

Other behaviors that exhausted parents engage in to calm crying and promote sleep also directly raise the risk of SIDS and suffocation (e.g. falling asleep with the baby on a couch, placing the baby on the stomach to sleep).

However, cribs are problematic.

Babies sleeping supine in cribs have a higher risk of plagiocephaly (flattening of the skull), which may require expensive and inconvenient medical treatment, and may result in a permanent deformity.

In an attempt to improve infant sleep in cribs, parents have employed several methods (prone sleeping, swaddling, rocking motion, sound), however each is problematic.

Swaddled babies can roll to the stomach position (prone), which is associated with an 8-19 fold increased risk of SIDS.

Rocking motion delivery systems (e.g. swings, cradles and hammocks) all present problems.

When sitting in a swing, a baby's head can roll forward and create an airway obstruction.

Sound delivery devices (e.g. fans, air filters, hair driers, sound machines and white noise CDs) may be cumbersome and expensive and the volume, quality or frequency profile of the sound they produce may be excessive or too different from in utero sound to be effective.

This product allowed the cradle to come to rest at an angle, in a partial swing position, which resulted in multiple infant deaths.

These and other current infant calming / sleep devices deliver fixed and unchangeable motion and sound.

This is a problem because each baby has a different mix of sound and motion that most efficiently calms the child and promotes sleep.

Another problem with fixed motion and sound infant calming / sleep devices is that each baby has a unique level of motion and sound that induces calming and sleep most efficiently.

For example, slow rocking may reduce sleep latency for one infant, yet be too subdued to do so in another infant.

Still another problem with fixed motion and sound infant calming / sleep devices is that the intensity of the stimuli needed to activate the calming reflex and induce calm and sleep varies substantially as a child's state changes.

Further, current infant calming / sleep devices do not continue all night long; do not deliver optimal sound and motion for triggering the calming reflex; do not increase and decrease their sensory input in a step-wise fashion to vary the sensory input intensity to give the baby the most effective level of stimulation; lack the ability to reduce the sensory input over time to wean a baby off the stimuli as he or she ages.

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