Read This If You Are About to Put Your Baby in a Donut Neck Float
Neck float – an inflatable swan from the children’s world. All over Instagram, you can find babies resting in them (no LaCroix cans). It’s a little creepy, but mostly adorable.
What is a neck float, you ask? This is a donut-shaped floatation device designed to keep the baby’s head firmly pressed when his body moves freely under water in pools and bathtubs. Pictured above is my niece, who started using this thing when she was four months old and seems to like it. There are baby spas where tiny toddlers swim together . Babies feel comfortable in the water – as if they are back in the womb. They swing their legs and “float” with their hands, sometimes without even having time to sit down.
But are these floats safe?
Some experts say it may not be in the long run. The Swimming Teachers Association has issued a warning against the “routine use” of floating neck rings , questioning the effect of the device on the development of babies’ spine, and therefore their nervous system and brain:
When babies hang upright in the water, supporting their head on a semi-rigid foam structure, especially infants under 5 months of age, there is anxiety about the compression of the soft and thin vertebrae in their neck and the tension of the ligaments and muscles. Infant development takes place in a cephalo-caudal direction (starting from the head down), and head control is the first huge task that infants master in the first months of life, followed by rotation. The basic body movements that help babies reach these early stages are limited to the neck rings. Even with buoyancy, active kicks (first involuntary and then voluntary) can exert excessive pressure on the neck, since the neck ring makes it difficult, if not impossible, to combine upper and lower body movements.
In addition, it influences the optimal development of the curves of the spine. … By maintaining a fixed position of the upper back and pectoral muscles involved in early head movements, the neck rings artificially create lengthening of the spine that can weaken rather than strengthen the lower back of infants in the medium to long term.
In addition, the float may deflate. Kieran Quinlan, assistant professor of pediatrics at Rush University Medical Center, said the devices “scare me to death,” NBC affiliate WDSU .
“It’s scary to keep your precious child one poorly sealed seam away from a dip in the pool,” she said.
In 2015, Otteroo recalled 3,000 of its popular neck floats due to 54 reports of broken seams. Since then, the product has been redesigned and has become more durable, although the creators continue to emphasize that this is not lifesaving device, a toy, and should be used only when an adult is closely watching the child at arm’s length. (If you want a real life-saving device, buy a children’s life jacket. )
There is no long-term research into the safety of these neck floats, but if you are going to try it, do so with caution. Don’t pin one to a child and then go away and grab Mai Tai at the pool bar. And ask someone to take a photo on Instagram. (But listen, take a photo from Instagram.)