The Happiest Baby on the Block

This is the first of my new blog series about various things that do and don’t work for me, particularly in relation to babies and baby products. I wanted to get this one posted first because it has been the best and most important thing we have discovered about parenting a newborn.

Coming from Australia, I expected to swaddle my baby and was very surprised to learn that it is not the done thing in Norway. It’s considered old-fashioned and some people believe it both restricts the baby’s freedom and hinders its development (both points are nonsense as far as I’m concerned).

Anyway, I had to order swaddling blankets from the UK (and I will post about the actual blankets later) because they are just not available here in Norway.

In the hospital I had nothing to swaddle Ella with, because the only blankets given to me were somewhat thick and bulky cotton cellular blankets which don’t lend themselves to tight swaddling. However, Ella seemed content to sleep with her arms above her head and didn’t seem to want to be wrapped tightly. So I figured I would just use the swaddles I had bought as light summer blankets, play mats, burp cloths etc.

However, as many mothers will be aware, everything changes when you get home from the hospital. Your baby starts growing and changing immediately, and suddenly doesn’t want to just fall asleep so easily. Ella was very good with going to sleep, she just couldn’t seem to stay asleep. Her little flailing arms wouldn’t stay down and every time she startled (which new babies do ALL the time) she’d wake herself up.

We tried swaddling her with the blankets I’d bought, and this worked for a day or two, but our lame attempts at proper swaddling had her little arms wiggling their way out within minutes. This is when I started looking around online for help. Not help with swaddling per se, but with getting a baby to stay asleep. This is when I started seeing references everywhere about a book called “The Happiest Baby on the Block”. It sounded a bit cheesy to me, but I saw it often enough (and the comments were overwhelmingly positive) that I thought I should check it out.

It turns out there is a book and a DVD with essentially the same information. We opted for the DVD, since I didn’t have time to sit down and read yet another baby book, and Chris just wasn’t interested in baby books anyway. Let me tell you, 6 weeks later and we have never looked back. I cannot recommend this DVD highly enough. Even though we have a very easy baby generally, I can only imagine how helpful this information would be to parents with a colicky baby.

Essentially, the book and DVD are about Dr Harvey Karp’s “5 S’s” and how to apply various combinations in soothing your crying baby. Note that these methods are only effective for the first 3 months. Dr Karp’s theory is based on the premise that human babies are born too early and need a “fourth trimester”. So for the first three months of their lives, it’s important to recreate the environment of the womb when your baby is unsettled. This involves:

• Swaddling
• Side- or stomach-lying position
• Shushing (making a shhh sound or playing white noise)
• Swinging or swaying; and
• Sucking (on a dummy/pacifier)

We already knew that the concept of swaddling is to keep the baby feeling secure, but after watching the DVD we realised we had been a bit wussy about it, and that to be effective a swaddle really needs to be quite tight. I was scared to do it, but seeing how quickly Ella responded in such a positive way, I was convinced immediately. It was also a relief to hear that babies initially fight the swaddle a little, but once in it they relax, which is exactly what happened.

I didn’t read the book, so can’t say one way or another whether it’s worth buying, but the DVD was excellent. You can actually see crying baby after crying baby just go completely calm as the “calming reflex” kicks in. We have never had to use all five S’s at once, since for us the swaddling, shushing and swaying are usually enough. Lately Ella has needed the sucking as well, but that is a whole other blog post that I will write soon.

The book and DVD are available from Amazon, Play.com and various other sources. You can also read more on the Happiest Baby website (link will open in a new window).