How to Stop Baby from Crying

Image via WikipediaIt seems like every week in the newspaper there's a story about someone shaking or smothering of a baby. It's scary how frequently it happens. Most often whoever is watching gets so upset by the baby's screams that they lose it and do something stupid (and criminal).

With Bjorn I don't remember crying being a big problem, except the day I ate hot peppers. Alexis is harder. She's 4 weeks old and she's started to cry a lot more. I'm surprised how frustrating it gets. It dulls my feelings for my baby. I try all I can to calm her and nothing works. I can't take a shower or get anything done because I'm just trying to calm her down. Pretty soon I give up because doing nothing seems to work as well as doing all I can.

It's pretty normal for babies to cry for a long time and be inconsolable and unpredictable for several weeks or months. I didn't have this problem with my first so I didn't know what parents who say their baby has colic experienced.

One night I held Little Miss and gently bounced her while rhythmically saying shhhhh, shhhhh, shhhhh. It worked and she fell back asleep. I was onto something...

I began to search for help and I think what I learned could help other parents. I found a book that explains how to stop baby from crying. It's called, "The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Baby Sleep Longer." There's both a book and DVD set. If you don't want to spend the money on it, you can search for videos about it on YouTube.

The methods in this book can help calm babies that need to sleep but can't quite get there on their own. 

I love the internet - there are answers to everything! I like to search for blog posts and forums and read all of the comments. That's how I learned about this solution.

Here's what the book says are keys to stopping your baby from crying:
5 S’s:
1) Swaddling – tightly, with her arms down (not out)
2) Side/stomach position – holding your baby in this way is calming
3) Shushing – making loud shushing sounds in her ear creates soothing white noise, almost as loud as her crying and right next to her ear
4) Swinging – rhythmic movement is soothing
5) Sucking – also soothing

So far this has helped a lot. Not solving the problem but giving me some great tools to reducing the issue. That and remembering it doesn't last forever.