More Newborn Literature (An Overly Serious Post)

The baby is born, brought home, and the fun begins!  I've already compiled one list of literature that is pretty helpful to have before the baby arrives.  Yet that list is hardly complete.

When Andrew and I were preparing for our little guy to hop out, we had been attending classes at least once a week at our local hospital.  One class was on Newborn Care and lasted for two sessions.  The first session should have had its own name as the Harvey Karp class because nearly all we did in that class was to watch the video version of Dr. Harvey Karp explain his 5 Ss of newborn soothing.  Our initial impression of him was something along the lines of "Is this guy a pedophile?  Does he own any non-blue shirts?"  In time, though, I've come to see him as something of a Baby Whisperer.  Watching the video it was hard to deny that the man seemed to have supernatural powers for calming colicky babies.  The most wonderful part, though, is that he teaches others the tricks he uses--and there's a book that you can buy that talks all about it.

Now, I will be honest.  I never bought his book, "The Happiest Baby on the Block," though I did later go on to buy "The Happiest Toddler on the Block" because I was so impressed with his methods and how well they worked with Jackson.  Andrew and I learned enough to follow Dr. Karp's 5 part system for soothing newborns just from watching the video, so we thought the book would be extraneous.  After all, it was working just fine.  Jackson was responding very well to the shushing and swinging and swaddling and side-lying and sucking prescribed.  Our ignorance really showed, however, when our giant baby kept growing, and it was becoming increasingly apparent that at some point Jackson was going to need to be able to self-soothe--and we weren't allowing him much opportunity for that.

Andrew and I had become expert swaddlers.  Moms who saw me swaddle Jackson used to watch in amazement and inform me that either they were not good swaddlers themselves or that their children didn't like to be swaddled (which was almost always them not knowing they were bad at swaddling).  Andrew had developed a great technique which I adapted for my own.  Given that the weather was nice and cool for the first few months and that we kept the A/C set low, we found that using a double swaddle worked best:  two blankets swaddled individually around Jackson did the trick.  He was a VERY strong baby (think Superman as an infant; I do not exaggerate here), so this double swaddling helped increase friction and limit his motion.  Even still, with as tight as we used to wrap him, Jackson would manage to get his arms out almost every time, especially as he got older, but typically by that point he was either waking up or was sufficiently drowsy that he fell back asleep.

Jackson cried very, very little compared to the average.  I had heard statistics that say the average young baby cries about 3 hours a day in total.  Jackson was more on the order of half an hour a day (until teething began in full force and we weren't prepared to address it).  Why would we want to spoil a system in which we wrap the child in a blanket and he zonks out, almost instantaneously unconscious?

If I had it to do over again, I would have bought the book.  As it was, I found myself holding a 5 or 6 month old baby at the book store and hurriedly scouring The Happiest Baby on the Block for some idea of how to wean ourselves from the 5Ss while still maintaining a happy baby.  And there it was, a small unassuming paragraph, briefly delineating how to cut down over a period of time from using Dr. Karp's methods.  We were months behind this schedule, not having previously known that there was one.

It took us until Jackson was 7 months old (and about 23lbs!) before we were finally able to put him down without full-on swaddling, which was only accomplished via the use of afghans as an intermediary stage.  Since the afghan blankets (crocheted for Jackson by my wonderful mother!) had a lot of stretchiness to them, Jackson had some freedom of movement, but he was still restrained slightly, so it was comforting to him.  He also had a hard time unswaddling himself from the afghan because his little fingers would catch in the holes and end up holding the whole thing around him.

This brings me to another issue:  how to get your kid to sleep.  Andrew and I were very spontaneous people before we were parents.  We kept odd hours and traveled whenever we liked.  A lot changed for us when our little man hatched, and for several months we resisted changing our ways.  Jackson was giving us a heck of a time about staying asleep, and we couldn't figure out why.  What it boiled down to was that we did not have a bedtime routine.  Jackson napped sometimes 5 or 6 times a day toward later infancy, and there was nothing to distinguish between napping and bedtime for him.  There was nothing we were doing to signal to him that naptime or bedtime was approaching, so putting him down eventually became a struggle.

Then I read The No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley.  Everything she wrote just seemed so much like common sense, and a lot of it was stuff I had heard before.  I guess you could say that reading it finally guilt tripped me into recognizing that Jackson was not the one who was the problem:  his parents were.  With time and dedication, we were able to steadily make progress toward a bedtime routine.  Now that Jackson is 16 months old, he brings me his favorite Green Blanky and a pacifier to let me know he's ready for his story and snuggle.  Most naps and nights he is asleep within 2 minutes of going to bed.  And he sleeps in his own queen-sized futon bed (a story for another day!).

The main thing to get here is that kids have specific needs.  By recognizing what they are feeling and what you can do to address those feelings, your kid can be more responsive to your desires.  Overall, you can have a much happier child with no need to suffer the heart-rending sounds of a screaming child; no need to leave your baby shrieking, retching, and miserable in a crib because you are at a loss for what more you can do.

That being said, I want to take a moment to discuss colic.  The standard agreement most medical practitioners use these days for defining colic is crying more 3 hours straight, 3 days a week, for at least 3 weeks.  Most also agree that it's somehow related to the digestive tract.  Dr. Karp's methods can help soothe a colicky baby, but they will not address the root of the problem.

Through some research, we tried to resolve some issues Jackson seemed to be having, which I would call related to colic.  He didn't meet the criteria, because he didn't cry that often--but perhaps it's because we were using the 5 Ss to soothe him all the time.  But there were many, many times that we could not comprehend any other reason for him to be cranky other than something digestively related.

Consider this:  when a baby is born, he or she starts off with only what came through the placenta to the womb.  During birth, some bacteria might be contracted, but hospitals do as best a job they can of cleaning the child's orifices to prevent infection and irritation.  If the mother is nursing, the baby can potentially derive some bacteria from her skin--but only if she does not wash her breasts.  When babies go on to consume solids, they will need bacteria in their intestines to digest the food.  This is just how the system works.  Our world is so sterile that often children do not get exposed to enough germs.

Enter BioGaia.  My MIL serendipitously sent us some information on probiotic drops for infants, and we obliged.  It cost us about $37 for a bottle, which lasted about a month, and we did it for two months beginning when Jackson was just about 6 months old.  It helped him noticeably.  I can only imagine what these drops could have done for a colicky baby like Jackson's friend Corinne had been.  The poor little dear screamed her head off almost every night from 7pm until 1am or later until she was about 4 months old.  There are lots of remedies out there for colic that simply do nothing for the hurting children--or their parents who are rapidly going insane!  Check out these results for the BioGaia infant probiotic drops.  (I also have some PDFs saved somewhere after we requested more literature from the manufacturer, so if anyone is interested I can dig those up and share them.)

Hopefully you will read the literature I have recommended above.  There is much to be learned in the way of perspective from reading Dr. Karp's book, such as the idea that toddlers are essentially cave people and that they are emotional rather than rational beings.  Elizabeth Pantley's book provides some great insights into the idea of baby sleep cycles, as well as a great metaphor for helping parents to understand how a child feels when being put in a crib after falling asleep in a parent's arms.

As always, trust your own instincts.  You know your child better than anyone else does.  And whatever problems you are having now, remember that it's just a phase.  They will grow out of it--eventually!