Saturday, January 02, 2010

Happiest Baby

A friend recently gave me a video that she claimed really helped her with her newborn a few months back and, being desperate for some ideas on how to get Adelaide to be calm in the afternoons and evenings, I decided to watch it today. She's been extra fussy lately, which I expected to happen around 6 weeks, especially since I know most babies go through a big growth spurt during this time. However, it's so exhausting to listen to her fuss every time she's not being bounced on the ball, it makes me slightly crazy, especially when I'm home alone with her!
So, I watched this movie, and while I'm not usually a big "follower" of child development gurus (there are way too many wackos out there), I really liked this video. Dr. Harvey Karp wrote a book and now made a video called "The Happiest Baby on the Block," which, while claiming to be a new method is really just a review of common traditional ideas for calming fussy babies. What I liked, though, was the step-by-step method to give a starting point for helping calm and organize your infant. It was a good reminder to swaddle Lyddie up, since she spent a lot of time swaddled when we first brought her home but we have since just swaddled her at night. We swaddled her using his swaddling instructions, which were much tighter than the way we had been taught and put her down for a nap (she was still awake but we knew she was tired) and for the first time in a few weeks, she really just fell asleep on her own and has slept now for at least 4 hours. She squawked a few minutes ago but by the time I got up and in to her (30 seconds) she was already fast asleep again. She hasn't had this good of an afternoon nap for a while now, and I'm loving it. I'm hoping she wakes up well-rested and has a nice happy alert period for a while before a short nap in the early evening and then a nice good sleep tonight.
Anyway, I know I just watched the video today but all of his ideas are well-grounded and logical for organizing a baby's sensory system and I will definitely be using his ideas to see if I can help her stay calm for longer periods at a time.

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2 comments:

  1. Good luck! How old is baby?

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  2. Thanks Taylor! She's 7 weeks old... and so far, so good. She's now easily gone down to sleep 4 different times with no fuss or crying. It's like a different baby, I am loving this!! Hallelujah!!

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