GO Baby Study
GEWOONTES IN DE OPVOEDING VAN BABY’S

As a consequence of the rising trend towards urbanicity in the past centuries, humans spend most time indoors (80-90%). The growing field of environmental neuroscience suggests, however, that outdoor green environments can positively impact psychophysiological health and development. In the GO Baby study, we aim to examine outdoor related caregiving habits of mothers in the Netherlands and potential benefits of outdoor walking and carrying for young infants.

GO Baby stands for “Gewoontes in de Opvoeding van Baby’s” and consists of two sub-projects:

The first part entails a brief nation-wide online survey assessing mothers’ caretaking habits regarding outdoor walking, infant carrying and putting the infant outdoors to sleep. Furthermore, the survey aims to identify potential facilitators and barriers of these outdoor related caregiving habits. Recruitment for the survey was successfully completed in April 2023 with more than 1300 respondents.

The second part is a randomized-controlled trial, examining the effects of a mother-infant walk in an outdoor green environment (vs. staying indoors) on infants’ physiological stress reduction (i.e., cortisol) and sleep following a stressor. Additionally, bearing in mind the role of caregivers as external stress regulators for young infants, we examined whether maternal proximity (being carried in a chest carrier vs. a pram) further aids infants’ stress-reduction.

For this lab-based experiment, We recruited 100 Dutch-speaking mothers and their infants (42 girls, 1-5 months old). After exposing their infant to a naturalistic laboratory stressor (diaper change and washing with a cloth), the dyads were randomized to: 1) walking in an outdoor green environment, either holding the infant (a) in a chest carrier, or (b) a pram; or 2) staying indoors with the infant (a) held or carried in the mother’s arms, or (b) lying in a pram. We collected five salivary samples from mothers and infants, and assessed maternal report of infants’ sleep duration, as well as maternal mood. The study has been pre-registered at https://osf.io/b9yqu.

Visit our website for more information: https://gobabystudie.nl/.

The following people from our lab are working in this study: Nicole Rheinheimer, Stefania Vacaru, Carolina de Weerth