New Mom Living in Arctic Shares Traditional Inuit Baby Sleep Method

An Inuit mother in the Arctic has shared a unique trick that she says helps lull her baby into a blissful slumber.

Willow Allen, a 25-year-old fashion model, revealed the hack in a video posted from her Instagram account (@willow.allen) on March that shows her newborn sleeping on a traditional Intuit “swing.”

Although having a baby sleep in an infant swing device goes against the current advice of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), Allen has slept in a traditional Inuit swing as a baby and uses one for her infant.

She told Newsweek: “This video was taken in our home. The baby swing is above our bed. It is a traditional indigenous baby swing that our baby sleeps in.”

“This is what people do in my region in the Arctic,” she says in the clip.

Allen is an Inuk—a member of the Inuit people, an indigenous group, the majority of whom inhabit the northern regions of Canada.

Born and raised in Inuvik—a town in Canada’s Northwest Territories located 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of the Arctic Circle—Allen splits her time between Inuvik and Saskatchewan, where she is currently. She and her husband recently welcomed their first child, 8-week-old August Rivers.

Allen said the swing in the video is created by hanging two ropes on two hooks between the walls of their bedroom. “There are two sticks that separate the ropes and a blanket folded between.”

She said that her baby “sleeps the best in his swing, he likes when we swing him back and forth and I think because its snug and comfortable, unlike a bassinet.”

Baby Swing Sleep Safety

The traditional Inuit swing seen in the latest Instagram post is different from the modern day infant swing devices that hold babies in a non-flat position. The AAP “advises parents against using infant swings for sleeping babies.”

Parents should move their baby to a firm sleep surface as soon as possible if their child falls asleep in a swing, car seat or bouncy seat, the academy says.

Safe sleep practices recommended by the AAP include “supine positioning, separate sleep spaces, and approved sleep surfaces such as cribs,” notes a May 2022 study in Pediatrics.

“Unsafe sleep practices contribute to sleep-related death, an important cause of mortality in infants,” the study said.

According to the AAP, around 3,500 infants die from sleep-related incidents annually in the United States. “Research indicates that sleep-related death can occur when an infant with an intrinsic vulnerability to SIDS (sudden infant death syndromes) placed in an unsafe sleep environment,” the AAP explains.

The academy adds: “Parents also should limit the amount of waking time that their baby spends in a seat such as an infant swing, bouncy seat, car seat or carrier to prevent the baby’s still-soft head from becoming flat as a result of being in the same position for too long.”

‘This Is How I Slept When I Was a Baby’

Allen says in the post: “This is a traditional Inuit baby swing and this is August. And I’m gonna show you how he sleeps in it.”

The mom is seen kneeling on the bed and placing her baby into the swing suspended over the bed.

She explains: “So, it’s basically just two ropes that go across our room and a blanket folder between them.”

Allen said: “I love it so much. This is how I slept when I was a baby,” noting that her son “loves it because it swings.”

The mom told Newsweek that she is unsure about how long this type of traditional baby swing may have been in use, saying “it might have been adopted from the First Nations (a grouping of indigenous people in Canada) long ago.”

Allen added that in Inuit culture, mothers also “traditionally wear our child all the time in our jackets, I think this helps the baby feel secure and happy always being so close to mom.”

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