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MASTERING THE FIVE "S's'
According to Karp, all babies are born with a calming reflex. Turning it on is the tricky part. But it can be done. He suggests before your baby is born (or quickly after), you become a pro of the "5 S's" -- swaddling, side or stomach position, shushing, swinging and sucking.
Try these one at a time, in order. In difficult cases, all five steps done at the same time are necessary. This is called the "cuddle cure."
Using these techniques will even help your baby sleep longer, Karp said, up to five hours straight.
- Swaddling. If a baby is wrapped tightly with his arms at his sides in a warm blanket, it creates the womb feeling, and it keeps his hands from flailing. In most cases, all it takes to stop a baby from crying is to swaddle him. But you have to have a larger blanket to do this. (See the information box for instructions on how to swaddle a baby.)
Babies will sometimes cry harder at first when you swaddle them, then they'll calm down, Karp said.
Swaddling your babies and placing them on their backs for bedtime greatly reduces the risk for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. They're not able to turn over if they're lying on their back with their arms tucked inside the blanket, explained Jennice Razza, a child birth educator who is certified to teach Karp's calming reflex to expecting parents at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center. That hospital is the first in the nation to offer a class section on Karp's methods.
- Side or stomach position. The back is the last place a baby wants to be when he's crying. If you cradle him in your arm with his stomach down and his head on its side in your hand, he feels like he's safe once again -- nice and tucked away like he was in his previous "home."
- Shushing. The womb is as noisy as a vacuum cleaner because of blood flowing to the placenta. You don't have to tip-toe around your newborn.
"Silence is deafening to a newborn," Razza told her class recently at the PVHMC session.
Once you've swaddled your baby and you have him positioned on his stomach or side, bend in close to his ear and make a "Shhhhhhh" sound -- as loud as he is crying. This will trigger the calming reflex. It might feel awkward and wrong to shush in a baby's ear. You might think you're hurting your baby's eardrums, but you're not, Razza said.
Babies are accustomed to the noise level of a vacuum cleaner. Remember? As the baby quiets down, bring the volume of your shushing down. Razza suggested parents run a white noise machine, a static radio station, the dishwasher, a fan or the clothes dryer while your baby is sleeping. These are soothing sounds to an infant.
- Swinging. If you've tried everything else and your baby is still crying with no signs of letting up, with the baby lying in the side/stomach position, attempt to shimmy or shiver the baby's head in very short, quick repetitions. Some of Karp's patients call this the "Jell-O head" jiggle. This is totally different from shaking a baby so vigorously that the baby suffers injury.
You could try swinging a fussy baby in a mechanical swing at a fast speed. Swings work best when the baby has already been calmed, Karp said. Car rides and rocking chairs help, too.
- Sucking. Some babies suck on their thumbs in the womb. So, when you give them something to suck on -- a finger, breast or pacifier, it turns on the calming reflex.
Sunday, March 06, 2005 - EVERYTHING stops the instant a newborn starts crying. Parents rush to figure out what's wrong. They change the diaper, feed and burp her. But the infant's cries crescendo -- inevitably grating on mom and dad's nerves. Frustration sets in. Parents begin to think if they can't even calm their baby's cries, what good are they?
What if there were a way to hush a crying infant in seconds? What if parents could turn their baby's nerve-wracking wailing into happy and relaxed gurgling and elevate themselves to confident, successful parents?
Dr. Harvey Karp, a long-time pediatritian and an assistant professor at the UCLA School of Medicine, says he has the answers. There's no magic or miracle involved. According to Karp, babies have a built-in calming reflex and parents just need to learn how to turn it on.
"It's not so obvious. If it were, we'd all be doing it," Karp said. "It just takes a little guidance to learn how to do it."
Prompted by a desire to stop abuse and shaken baby syndrome (a term used to describe the violent shaking of a baby -- usually because the infant won't stop crying -- to the point of injury, brain damage, hearing loss, paralysis or even death), Karp began researching how other cultures handle newborns. He found that babies in African and some Asian cultures don't cry much at all.
"I read about this culture in Africa where 90 percent of babies could be calmed in less than 30 seconds," Karp explained. "So, it was instantly clear that either these babies were mutant little babies, or else their parents knew something that we'd forgotten in our culture."
HOME SWEET HOME
Karp says parents first have to understand life from a crying newborn's perspective. The baby has been evicted from a snug, comfortably noisy and soothing home (mom's womb) to a harsh environment of cribs, silence and diminished human contact.
"Even if you hold your baby 18 hours a day, which seems like A LOT from our point of view -- from their point of view, it's a rip-off because they're used to 24 hours a day (in the womb)," said Karp, who's been featured on a number of talk shows including "The Dr. Phil Show" and "The View."
According to this author of "The Happiest Baby on the Block" (Bantam $13.95), the first three months of a newborn's life are the "missing fourth trimester." Babies need to be held often during that time. Studies show that this will help babies develop independence and strong self-esteem because their needs were met by their parents.
"You can't spoil newborns by holding them too much," Karp said.
During the "fourth trimester," some babies have extreme difficulty adjusting to their new environment, and they cry often. Karp says some babies cry at least three hours a day. Colicky babies cry for hours and hours on end, wailing like they are in pain.
What is colic? Ask health professionals and parents and they can't really explain it. The dictionary describes it as abdominal pain. Gas? Maybe. Tummy discomfort? Possibly.
Karp says in most cases, colic is simply homesickness -- a longing to be back in the womb. If a baby were truly colic, then why would he immediately fall to sleep when you take him for a ride in the car? If a baby were indeed colicky, then why would holding and rocking her, calm her? Abdominal discomfort, gas or otherwise, doesn't go away because babies are in a car or being rocked in mom's or dad's arms.
MASTERING THE FIVE "S's'
According to Karp, all babies are born with a calming reflex. Turning it on is the tricky part. But it can be done. He suggests before your baby is born (or quickly after), you become a pro of the "5 S's" -- swaddling, side or stomach position, shushing, swinging and sucking.
Try these one at a time, in order. In difficult cases, all five steps done at the same time are necessary. This is called the "cuddle cure."
Using these techniques will even help your baby sleep longer, Karp said, up to five hours straight.
- Swaddling. If a baby is wrapped tightly with his arms at his sides in a warm blanket, it creates the womb feeling, and it keeps his hands from flailing. In most cases, all it takes to stop a baby from crying is to swaddle him. But you have to have a larger blanket to do this. (See the information box for instructions on how to swaddle a baby.)
Babies will sometimes cry harder at first when you swaddle them, then they'll calm down, Karp said.
Swaddling your babies and placing them on their backs for bedtime greatly reduces the risk for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. They're not able to turn over if they're lying on their back with their arms tucked inside the blanket, explained Jennice Razza, a child birth educator who is certified to teach Karp's calming reflex to expecting parents at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center. That hospital is the first in the nation to offer a class section on Karp's methods.
- Side or stomach position. The back is the last place a baby wants to be when he's crying. If you cradle him in your arm with his stomach down and his head on its side in your hand, he feels like he's safe once again -- nice and tucked away like he was in his previous "home."
- Shushing. The womb is as noisy as a vacuum cleaner because of blood flowing to the placenta. You don't have to tip-toe around your newborn.
"Silence is deafening to a newborn," Razza told her class recently at the PVHMC session.
Once you've swaddled your baby and you have him positioned on his stomach or side, bend in close to his ear and make a "Shhhhhhh" sound -- as loud as he is crying. This will trigger the calming reflex. It might feel awkward and wrong to shush in a baby's ear. You might think you're hurting your baby's eardrums, but you're not, Razza said.
Babies are accustomed to the noise level of a vacuum cleaner. Remember? As the baby quiets down, bring the volume of your shushing down. Razza suggested parents run a white noise machine, a static radio station, the dishwasher, a fan or the clothes dryer while your baby is sleeping. These are soothing sounds to an infant.
- Swinging. If you've tried everything else and your baby is still crying with no signs of letting up, with the baby lying in the side/stomach position, attempt to shimmy or shiver the baby's head in very short, quick repetitions. Some of Karp's patients call this the "Jell-O head" jiggle. This is totally different from shaking a baby so vigorously that the baby suffers injury.
You could try swinging a fussy baby in a mechanical swing at a fast speed. Swings work best when the baby has already been calmed, Karp said. Car rides and rocking chairs help, too.
- Sucking. Some babies suck on their thumbs in the womb. So, when you give them something to suck on -- a finger, breast or pacifier, it turns on the calming reflex.
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
These methods take practice and they each have to be done correctly, or else a baby's calming reflex won't be turned on and he will keep crying, Karp said.
"With refelexes, you've got to do it exactly right, otherwise it doesn't work," Karp said. "If I hit your knee, but I'm off by an inch, nothing happens. If I hit it in the right place, I can get your knee reflex a thousand times in a row. Same thing with the calming reflex."
But, in some cases, a baby will continue to cry even if you've done everything right. In this situation, you should rule out illness or other medical conditions. Consult your physician for help.
Once you've mastered the quintet of S's, you might look forward to your baby crying because you'll be able to calm him so easily.
"It's kinda like riding a bike. It's going to be weird in the beginning, but once you get the hang of it, you feel like you've been doing it your whole life," Karp said.
FIND OUT MORE
Dr. Harvey Karp, a Los Angeles-based pediatrician, explains in detail his methodology for calming a crying baby in his book, "The Happiest Baby on the Block," (Bantam $13). Visit www.thehappiestbaby.com to purchase the book, DVD or VHS.
To get the word out faster, Karp began certifying individuals to teach new parents -- or anyone who wants to learn -- how to effectively execute his methodology. His goal is to help improve infant/parent bonding and reduce the occurrence of shaken baby syndrome, which often happens when parents don't know how to stop their babies from crying and instead get so frustrated and angry that they violently shake their babies to the point of causing physical harm.
In January, Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center became the first hospital in the nation to offer a hospital-based class with Karp's Happiest Baby program included. The "Baby Express" parenting classes covers four areas where parents often need information: car seat safety, breast-feeding basics, baby basics and the Happiest Baby method.
"Because of changes in our society and family life over the past couple of generations, parents are not often taught valuable baby skills that have proven effective in many other societies found around the world," said Sherry Turney-Mayeaux, education coordinator at PVHMC and director of education for The Happiest Baby, Inc. "Babies don't go home with manuals. Our class is designed to help parents learn the skills they need to be successful parents."
PVHMC's Baby Express class, including The Happiest Baby portion, is offered as either a Saturday class or two weeknight classes. The class is open to everyone in the community and is $40 per couple, which includes the VHS or DVD version of "The Happiest Baby on the Block" video and a "Soothing Sounds" CD.
For more information or a class schedule, call the hospital's Family Resource and Education Center at (909) 620-6663.
* Wendy Rizzo, a certified childbirth educator in Upland, teaches a private class for anyone who's willing to learn how to calm and soothe a crying baby. It's a hands-on, three-hour class so parents can learn all about Karp's methods.
The class is $40 per couple, which includes the parent kit and the white noise CD. Class times depend on demand. Call (909) 981-8837 for more information.
* Julianne Langlois, a mom with a background in teaching who used Karp's program with great success when she had her first babies (twins) 17 months ago, is also certified to teach Karp's methods. Her class is about three hours long and will be taught at different locations in the Inland Empire. She charges $30 per couple, which includes the "Happiest Baby On the Block" DVD (or VHS) and white noise CD. Please contact her at (951) 817-2533.
-- La Rue Novick
HOW TO SWADDLE YOUR BABY
Dr. Harvey Karp teaches what he dubbed the DUDU (down, up, down, up) method of swaddling. It's better to watch his DVD or take a certified class, but to describe it simply, you have to first place a large, square blanket on your bed and position it like a diamond. Next, fold down the top corner a third of the way down to meet the center of the blanket. Lay your baby down so his head is just above the folded blanket line. Keep his arms at his sides.
Bring the right side of the blanket (D)own across the baby's body and tuck snugly under the baby's lower back. This part must be done well, or the wrap will unravel. Your baby's arm should be held so securely against his side that he can't bend his arm up, even if you let go of the blanket.
Straighten your baby's left arm against his body. Bring the bottom corner (or tail) (U)p across his body to cover that arm and then tuck the fabric tightly under his left arm and shoulder.
Then hold the remaining material in your right hand and bring the fold (D)own to the baby's midchest. Then hold it with your left hand.
Grab the remaining tail and wrap it tightly across the baby's waist and around him like a belt. Bring the rest (U)p to tuck it in at the top, near the baby's chest or shoulder.
If you can slip your hand inside the bound blanket and your hand fits snugly between the blanket and your baby's chest, then it's OK. You don't want it make it too tight, or too loose or else it won't work.
La Rue Novick may be reached by phone at (909) 483-9328.
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