Infant Crying, Feeding and Sleeping : Devleopment, Problems and Treatments

Infant crying, feeding and sleeping problems are a common cause of parental concern and a costly element in primary health care. This book is the result of a study which examines the relationships between the problems and throws light on the developmental and regulatory mechanisms involved. Results of workshops held with primary healthcare workers have been incorporated to ensure the book's relevance to practice. The book aims to bring together research which has previously been fragmented across a variety of professional disciplines and is framed in the knowledge that the problems of crying, feeding and sleeping do not occur in isolation: infants who cry a lot tend to have disturbances of sleep, feeding and other aspects of behaviour. The authors argue that, given that infancy is a period of rapid transition and adaptation, it is unsurprising that problems are commonplace. They further contend that the problems are best approached as difficulties of development, and are not for the most part due to medical conditions or parental ineptitude. This publication is aimed at the graduate level of a multidisciplinary audience: child psychologists and psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, health visitors, midwives and paediatricians should find it useful.