Glorious Sleep
misty · Sun, Aug 30, 2015I’ve been reading a book called The Happiest Baby On The Block about how to tend to fussy babies (I think Noelle bought it for me. Thanks, Noelle!). Milo isn’t too fussy yet, but we want to be prepared. The author describes babies that are “intense” or “passionate”, and I definitely think Milo falls under one of those categories. She’s not fussy most of the time, but she hasn’t yet learned how to calm herself down when she gets freaked out. This means that she goes from a fuss to a scream really quickly. So, I think it’s probably fair to say that she might be sort of fussy or difficult to calm in the very near future (according to the book, colic often sets in sometime after about 2 weeks and lasts until about 3-4 months).
In the book, the author describes the 5 Ss to calm a newborn: swaddling, side or stomach position, shhh-sound, swinging or swaying, and sucking. We’ve been trying some of these out, and holy crap do they work when you do them right! Chase swaddles her tightly, then one of us turns her on her side (face out) and bounces or gently swings her in our arms while making the shhh sound pretty loudly. She passes right out! It’s like magic! I haven’t finished the book, so I haven’t gotten to the chapter on sucking (I’m eager to find out when to introduce the pacifier), but so far it’s been an invaluable tool in helping our little lady calm down and get some rest. And it’s also helped Chase and me get some rest, too, which has been pretty great. Middle-of-the-day naps are just heaven.
We also recently bought a baby swing. It was $5 on craigslist, so we figured we’d try it out. Milo is still undecided about it. She’ll tolerate it for a bit, but then she gets in this weird mood where she can’t decide whether she wants to go to sleep or cry. She has yet to really do either while swinging, though. So, win?