How babies sleep: demedicalising and humanising the issue for child health professionals

Abstract

As a paediatrician—and presenter of the BBC’s Babies: Their Wonderful World, the largest study of early childhood development ever undertaken for television—you would think I would have a confident answer when people ask, ‘How do I get my baby to sleep?’ But the truth is, even we do not know. My brother, a General Practitioner (GP), once called me in a whispering panic from a hallway at 03:00, cradling his howling newborn: ‘What’s the trick again?’