Overview
Baby Business: A Guide for Parents is a short booklet to help parents manage baby’s sleep and crying in the first few months of life. The guide is based on up-to-date research and evidence and offers practical and accessible advice to parents.
To purchase a copy of Baby Business: A Guide for Parents, please download and return this order form to our team at [email protected]
How does Baby Business help parents?
Crying and sleep problems are very common in young babies and can cause distress to carers and babies. Both are associated with postnatal depression symptoms.
Baby Business helps parents with various aspects of baby sleep and crying including:
- Infant sleep cycles
- Crying patterns
- Independent settling
- Self-care for parents
Where can Baby Business be shared?
Since its release in 2014, over 8,000 copies of Baby Business have been purchased across Australia by maternal and child health organisations, councils, medical centres and hospitals. The guide is shared in these settings to help new parents access evidence-based care for infant sleep and crying problems.
Baby Business is suitable for use in:
- New parent groups
- Antenatal classes
- Consultations with GPs
- Consultations with maternal and child health nurses
How was Baby Business developed?
Baby Business was developed by the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, The Royal Children’s Hospital and Parenting Research Centre. The guide is based on a large trial with Victorian parents that improved maternal mental health symptoms and infant sleep and crying problems.
The guide was used as a resource in Preventing Early Sleep and Crying Problems and Postnatal Depression: A Randomised Controlled Trial alongside a DVD, phone consultation and parent group. This was known as the Baby Business Education Program.
The study aimed to see if the program could:
- Prevent infant night-time and daytime sleep problems.
- Prevent crying and feeding problems and infant formula changes.
- Improve caregiver depression symptoms.
- Improve caregiver cognitions and behaviours around infant sleep, and sleep quality and quantity.
- Improve health service use for the infant’s behaviour and caregiver wellbeing, compared to usual care delivered by maternal and child health nurses.
At 6-months, caregivers in the intervention group were less likely to:
- score high on a depression scale
- spend more than 20 minutes attending to their infant overnight
- have changed infant formula.
Our team
- Professor Harriet Hiscock, Group Leader, Health Services and Economics, Centre for Community Child Health, Murdoch Children's Research Institute; Director, Health Services Research Unit, The Royal Children's Hospital
- Anne Truong, Project Assistant, Health Services and Economics, Centre for Community Child Health, Murdoch Children's Research Institute
Partners and funders
Baby Business was released by the Centre for Community Child Health at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and Royal Children’s Hospital in 2014.
Resources
To purchase a copy of Baby Business: A Guide for Parents, please download and return this order form to our team at [email protected]
- [Website] Raising Children Network has lots of information and resources to help you manage your baby’s sleep and crying including sleep guides, a podcast and activity guides to help support new parents and carers in raising healthy children.
- [Guide] This factsheet provides information on Sudden unexpected death in infancy (SUDI) and ways to reduce your baby’s risk and where to get help.
- [Online training] The Infant Sleep eLearning Program has been designed for health professionals and parents to help babies aged six months and older to sleep during the day and overnight.
- [Journal article] Prevalence, comorbidity and factors associated with sleeping, crying and feeding problems at 1 month of age: A community-based survey.
- [Journal article] Preventing early infant sleep and crying problems and postnatal depression: a randomized trial.
Contact us
For further information, please contact Anne Truong.