The Baby Hammock Story

Hooi’s daughter Joanna was born in November 1988. The proverbial ‘perfect’ baby, feeding and sleeping well, she was a joy to behold. At about 4 weeks, however, things began to change, with the onset of colic, an often difficult to understand syndrome. She soon became unsettled and restless. As with most colicky babies, sleeping and feeding became a ‘chore’ rather than a ‘joy’.

Hooi: I pondered over the question of ‘a cure’ for all this colic! What does a newborn do most of the time? Sleep? Yes, apart from feeding and the other natural things that all good babies do, the newborn sleeps or tries to, most of the time. So he spends most of his early life lying down, somewhere.

Hooi started asking questions: Could the logical answer to the problem then, be as simple as a bed? Perhaps some kind of a ‘nest’ that replicates the comfort and security of the maternal womb may not be too far fetched an idea for a solution! After all, why do babies curl up in a corner of a cot to sleep?

Could a non-traditional sleep environment make babies more comfortable?

With more research into the subject, it became increasingly evident to Hooi that there are many cultures that use an alternative bed for their babies. In many countries, a little hammock of one kind or another is used exclusively for their newborns. In these societies, the hammock as a baby bed can be found everywhere, suspended from beams in corridors and doorways, from the branches of shady old trees and on the front or back of mothers working in the fields. “Every time you look in on these ‘hammock’ babies,” Hooi says, “they are asleep, blissfully!”

Hooi: If you examine the make up and structure of a hammock, you are reminded of some sort of an external womb, a kind of a ‘pouch’ that has many ingredients of the maternal womb. In kangaroos and other marsupials, the pouch is both an external and internal womb where the young is nurtured until they are old enough to fend for themselves. This is the supreme place of security, a place where they can simply concentrate on the joys of feeding, sleeping and growing.

The answer: A sleep environment resembling the maternal womb

According to Hooi, the human baby, amongst the most helpless at birth, must be given an environment that has some resemblance to the maternal womb. To cope with the outside world in their first few months of ‘external’ existence, Hooi reasons that as he spends most of his time in bed, he should have a bed that simulates the conditions of the maternal womb - a bed that can provide spatial restrictions or enclosure, tactile touch and rhythmic movements.

Hooi: The conventional baby bed that is available is therefore nowhere near suitable. They are, very simply, adult beds made in miniature and ‘babied’ up with frills. The only problem here is that babies are not miniature adults! They are initially frail and helpless and they need a lot of nurturing and sleep. Their bed must therefore be a place of utmost comfort and security, a bed that is at once soothing and stimulating.

In current debates and discussions on the topic of sleep or the lack of, much has been said about the methods- Ferber, controlled crying, attaching a crib to the parental bed, medication etc etc.

Hooi: We impose this so called ‘expert advice’ on our babies in the hope that one of them might work, when in fact a bit of common sense and lateral thinking might point us in the right direction. It just might be possible that the root of most sleeping problems in a normal infant (i.e. not hungry, wet, sick, colicky or reflux) could be put down to one very simple thing, his bed. He could well be looking, even craving for something that he can easily and naturally identify with.

Hooi reasons that forcing a baby to sleep in a still, flat, open bassinet or crib is akin to asking us to sleep on floorboards after a lifetime on a mattress. “Surely it is not too difficult for us adults,” Hooi says, “to understand that babies, like us, will prefer to sleep in something that they are familiar with and accustomed to. After all, they have just spent their whole life in the womb!”.